12 ms·

Visualizing Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration

131 points by thisisit 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
montrose 8y ago
Watching this made me realize how different things were in 2010 than 1980.
lgbr 8y ago
One point I find they are missing here is how conditions in origin countries greatly affect immigration. German emigration dropped abruptly due to Bismarck's creation of the social welfare state [1]. Recent improvements in the Mexican economy are a large factor in the decline of Mexican immigration [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Early_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Early_legisl... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_trend_reversal_in_migration_Mexico-U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_....
- elvirs 8y ago
  I hope CIA doesnt decide Mexico needs a different ruler and doesnt overthrow the government just because some asshole in DC decided thats a good idea.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    The CIA mostly doesn't decide that kind of thing, they just implement decisions made in the White House.
mxfh 8y ago
Stamen studio once did a similiar, arguably more elaborated one, once for Richmond's "American Panorama": https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/foreignborn https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/foreignborn
Blackstone4 8y ago
Interesting to see the graphics on this. Being from the UK and having spent time working in the US, I feel like in the last ~10 years it has become harder for Europeans to immigrate to the US. Does this ring true for anyone?
- ed_balls 8y ago
  Apart from working in tech. Is there a reason to move to US for an average bloke?
  - mike-cardwell 8y ago
    As a Brit, the only thing that would really draw me to America is the fact that they speak English and I can pick a state where the weather is nice. There are two absolute things that would stop me though: The lack of annual leave, and the lack of social healthcare. Maybe if I ever get rich I'd move, but I really don't want to be a poor to averagely wealthy American. I'd rather be a poor to averagely wealthy Brit. [edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that. I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop. They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.
      - mike-cardwell 8y ago
        Yeah, I did wonder if that was it. I've since discovered that busses are a thing that only poor people do in the US.
bruceb 8y ago
"An important note. This data excludes forced migration (slavery) and illegal immigration." So it doesn't give the full picture.
- phyller 8y ago
  I don't know why you are downvoted for this. Both of those things have had a significant impact on demographics, and are also culturally very important. It feels like the animation white-washes history a bit.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  That's because it's much harder to track, and any estimates on illegal immigration are just that - estimates, based on how many people are actually caught.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    I agree, but it would have been a better idea to include graphs with and without the estimates. Since the only note on it is just a text note, it will be all too easy for people to think this is a full picture. Slavery and illegal immigration are both big parts of how the U.S. population came to be, like it or not, and they are such big parts that, although I sympathize with the difficulties of estimating them, not estimating them seems like a bigger problem. But, it's a cool article nonetheless.
- elboru 8y ago
  It doesn't show the Mexican population assimilated after the US-Mexican war either. When half the Mexican territory was seeded to the US with a considerable porcentaje of its population.
loudmax 8y ago
This is a great graph. I love videos like this. One thing missing is migration out of the United States. For much of the video, the largest source of immigrants is Canada. Surely the US Canadian border is a two way street. I'd expect migrations between the US and Canada to roughly balance out. And as much as we Americans like to think of ourselves as living in the promised land, there are a significant number of immigrants who arrived on US shores, decided after a few years that it didn't live up to expectations, and then went back to their country of origin.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  "A significant number of immigrants who arrived on US shores, decided after a few years that it didn't live up to expectations, and then went back to their country of origin." Often it wasn’t that people were disappointed in the USA, it’s that they only planned to be there temporarily. That is a pretty common story in the Balkans. Great-grandfather went to the USA, worked his ass off for a couple of decades max, and then came back to the old country and built a mighty house in his native village. And while in the USA, great-grandfather did some terribly isolated job like shepherding, or lived solely in an immigrant bubble, which meant that he never did learn English.
willvarfar 8y ago
Its interesting to see the immigration from Canada. Has there been any significant American emigration to e.g. Canada? It would be good to show the slavery, and also somehow colourize the US itself by what origins make up the population.
- mieseratte 8y ago
  > Has there been any significant American emigration to e.g. Canada? In recent history, Vietnam War draft dodgers[0]. Estimates range between 20,000 to 30,000 men fled to Canada to avoid the draft. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Draft_dodgers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Dra...
  - refurb 8y ago
    In 2015, 7,500 Americans were admitted to Canada as Permanent Residents.[1] From 1986-2006, 445,000 Canadians immigrated to the US, or ~22,000 per year.[2] So it would appear to be a net outflow from Canada. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Sources_of_immigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Sources_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
- rybrr 8y ago
  Most of those immigrants are probably French Canadian migrating into places like New England.
perpetualpatzer 8y ago
It would be interesting to see on a % of US/global population basis. The country colors get much brighter from the 70's on, making it tough to distinguish the effects of recent immigration trends from the global population growing from 4 to 7.5 billion over that time.
elvirs 8y ago
its nice to see the rest of the world light up in last 15-20 years. people from other countries finally have financial and legal means to leave their shitty and usually oppressed lives behind to join american dream. I wish the immigration policy was changed to give more equal chance of legal immigration rather than the shitshow we have right now.
- iraphael 8y ago
  I was actually wondering what the data considers "immigration". This shows no African countries light up until around the 90s but that's somewhat incorrectly categorizing influx of people into the US as it ignores "forced immigration" (kidnapping for slavery).
  - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
    This visualization starts in 1820, so it misses out on the time period when most slaves were brought into the country. The US banned the importation of slaves in 1808 and made it a capital offense in 1820. Some were smuggled in illegally after that, but not in the enormous quantities that they previously had been.
Alex3917 8y ago
According to Wikipedia the vast majority of immigrants from Africa are not in fact coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_Uni...
Symmetry 8y ago
I imagined more of a discontinuity with the passage of the 1924 immigration restriction act to prevent all those "red" Italians from entering the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924
temp-dude-87844 8y ago
Can anyone point me to low bias, nonpartisan analyses about the US immigrant population by practically meaningful cohorts? These sites that rehash aggregate numbers are the most widespread, and the subtext on sites like this is that they provide insightful portrait into who immigrants are -- but this is an incomplete picture that speaks nothing of their admission category and conditions, their fates in the States, their position on socioeconomic metrics by year since their entry. A while back, I was looking for data to quantify the distinction of "Ellis Island"-style open application immigration, vs. the precondition-gated system we have today. I was also trying to understand the socioeconomic differences between employment/skill-based immigrants (of various admission categories) and family-based immigrants. But official government sources are spread across multiple agencies, and the cohorts are set in a way that isn't helpful in disaggregating superficially similar people with very different outcomes. In my observations, pro-immigration groups tend to publish data that is difficult to disaggregate (example: this data sheet on 'Profile of the Unauthorized Population: California' [1] by the Migration Policy Institute), while groups that want to restrict immigration (Center for Immigration Studies, The Heritage Foundation) have better cohorts with more practical relevance, but the less flattering data is used by them to justify their various restrictive policies, and their bias raises concerns about their veracity. It's a challenge to find a source that hits the middle ground. [1] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/CA https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-...
- refurb 8y ago
  Are you looking for recent data? USCIS publishes data about admission to the US by visa category (family, skilled, unskilled, refuge, etc) in quite a lot of detail.
  - temp-dude-87844 8y ago
    This is a good primary source -- relevant example: 'Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2016', Table 9 [1]. [1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/table9 https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/tab...
christophclarke 8y ago
Here is the source of the animation (looks much nicer, and interactive) http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/ http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/
RightMillennial 8y ago
It's interesting that Russian immigration to the U.S. drastically drops around 1920 which is half way through the Russian Civil War.
- gandhium 8y ago
  Soviet regime got to stop those 'enemies of the state fleeing wrath of the proletariat'. Soviets introduced exit visa back in 1925, so probably that was a reason of that drop.
drderidder 8y ago
It's an interesting visualization but gives only one side of the picture. Emigration away from the US happens increasingly as well.
timewarrior 8y ago
I built a company and sold it to Dropbox. Building another company to cure Cancer using AI. Leadership positions at various big companies. Wrote a book about Entrepreneurship which is part of an Executive MBA program. Built the biggest social network to come out of India. Because I am from India, I would never get a Green Card through EB-2 (though I have two approved EB-2 petitions). Yesterday, USCIS denied my EB-1 petition using argument which are against the law. Now I have to leave US :( I have an approved O-1 (extraordinary ability), but apparently, once you have filed for a Green Card Adjustment of Status, you can't get a visa stamp for anything other than H-1. Not sure if I can come back!
- oblio 8y ago
  Sorry for your misfortune. But at this point, wouldn't it just make sense for you to just go to a country which is more welcoming?
  - timewarrior 8y ago
    Yes. Couldn't agree more!
  - Karishma1234 8y ago
    Yes, this is a good strategy. Move the capital and jobs to some other country. Singapore or Canada are a good options that have been used by my other Indian friends.
- galieos_ghost 8y ago
  US was built on taking the best and brightest from other countries and giving them an environment to thrive, it benefited the individual and the country as well. I would love for you to become a citizen but for some reason Democrats have chosen to punish talented people who follow the law in favor of uneducated criminals. The US will continue losing ground if we continue with current immigration policies The biggest irony is that Silicon Valley companies support this. Imagine Google simply hiring anyone who walked onto Googleplex and removed all hiring standards for engineering positions, it would be suicidal. That's the equivalent to our current immigration strategy.
rodionos 8y ago
U.S. expatriation numbers are down YoY, by the way: https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/tree/master/Expatriation#annual-data https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/tree/master/Expatr...

131 points by thisisit 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

montrose 8y ago

Watching this made me realize how different things were in 2010 than 1980.

lgbr 8y ago

One point I find they are missing here is how conditions in origin countries greatly affect immigration. German emigration dropped abruptly due to Bismarck's creation of the social welfare state [1]. Recent improvements in the Mexican economy are a large factor in the decline of Mexican immigration [2]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Early_legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Early_legisl... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_trend_reversal_in_migration_Mexico-U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_....

elvirs 8y ago
I hope CIA doesnt decide Mexico needs a different ruler and doesnt overthrow the government just because some asshole in DC decided thats a good idea.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  The CIA mostly doesn't decide that kind of thing, they just implement decisions made in the White House.

mxfh 8y ago

Stamen studio once did a similiar, arguably more elaborated one, once for Richmond's "American Panorama": https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/foreignborn https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/foreignborn

Blackstone4 8y ago

Interesting to see the graphics on this. Being from the UK and having spent time working in the US, I feel like in the last ~10 years it has become harder for Europeans to immigrate to the US. Does this ring true for anyone?

ed_balls 8y ago
Apart from working in tech. Is there a reason to move to US for an average bloke?
- mike-cardwell 8y ago
  As a Brit, the only thing that would really draw me to America is the fact that they speak English and I can pick a state where the weather is nice. There are two absolute things that would stop me though: The lack of annual leave, and the lack of social healthcare. Maybe if I ever get rich I'd move, but I really don't want to be a poor to averagely wealthy American. I'd rather be a poor to averagely wealthy Brit. [edit] My brother moved to Orlando a few years ago, and I love visiting for the weather and Theme parks. I took a greyhound bus from Tampa one day and an immigration officer came on the bus and aggressively demanded to inspect my passport. Pretty crazy. I've never been randomly forced to prove I'm allowed to be in the UK in the nearly 40 years I've lived here. Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >Yet, a few short stays in Orlando and I experience that. I wasn't so much the visit in Orlando -- it was you using a Greyhound bus, which put you in the "possible illegal immigrant/poor person to abuse" category in the eyes of the cop. They'd be much less likely to stop and ask you anything if you were just driving there yourself, or merely walking around Orlando.
    - mike-cardwell 8y ago
      Yeah, I did wonder if that was it. I've since discovered that busses are a thing that only poor people do in the US.

bruceb 8y ago

"An important note. This data excludes forced migration (slavery) and illegal immigration." So it doesn't give the full picture.

phyller 8y ago
I don't know why you are downvoted for this. Both of those things have had a significant impact on demographics, and are also culturally very important. It feels like the animation white-washes history a bit.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
That's because it's much harder to track, and any estimates on illegal immigration are just that - estimates, based on how many people are actually caught.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  I agree, but it would have been a better idea to include graphs with and without the estimates. Since the only note on it is just a text note, it will be all too easy for people to think this is a full picture. Slavery and illegal immigration are both big parts of how the U.S. population came to be, like it or not, and they are such big parts that, although I sympathize with the difficulties of estimating them, not estimating them seems like a bigger problem. But, it's a cool article nonetheless.
elboru 8y ago
It doesn't show the Mexican population assimilated after the US-Mexican war either. When half the Mexican territory was seeded to the US with a considerable porcentaje of its population.

loudmax 8y ago

This is a great graph. I love videos like this. One thing missing is migration out of the United States. For much of the video, the largest source of immigrants is Canada. Surely the US Canadian border is a two way street. I'd expect migrations between the US and Canada to roughly balance out. And as much as we Americans like to think of ourselves as living in the promised land, there are a significant number of immigrants who arrived on US shores, decided after a few years that it didn't live up to expectations, and then went back to their country of origin.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago
"A significant number of immigrants who arrived on US shores, decided after a few years that it didn't live up to expectations, and then went back to their country of origin." Often it wasn’t that people were disappointed in the USA, it’s that they only planned to be there temporarily. That is a pretty common story in the Balkans. Great-grandfather went to the USA, worked his ass off for a couple of decades max, and then came back to the old country and built a mighty house in his native village. And while in the USA, great-grandfather did some terribly isolated job like shepherding, or lived solely in an immigrant bubble, which meant that he never did learn English.

willvarfar 8y ago

Its interesting to see the immigration from Canada. Has there been any significant American emigration to e.g. Canada? It would be good to show the slavery, and also somehow colourize the US itself by what origins make up the population.

mieseratte 8y ago
> Has there been any significant American emigration to e.g. Canada? In recent history, Vietnam War draft dodgers[0]. Estimates range between 20,000 to 30,000 men fled to Canada to avoid the draft. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Draft_dodgers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Dra...
- refurb 8y ago
  In 2015, 7,500 Americans were admitted to Canada as Permanent Residents.[1] From 1986-2006, 445,000 Canadians immigrated to the US, or ~22,000 per year.[2] So it would appear to be a net outflow from Canada. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Sources_of_immigration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Sources_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...
rybrr 8y ago
Most of those immigrants are probably French Canadian migrating into places like New England.

perpetualpatzer 8y ago

It would be interesting to see on a % of US/global population basis. The country colors get much brighter from the 70's on, making it tough to distinguish the effects of recent immigration trends from the global population growing from 4 to 7.5 billion over that time.

elvirs 8y ago

its nice to see the rest of the world light up in last 15-20 years. people from other countries finally have financial and legal means to leave their shitty and usually oppressed lives behind to join american dream. I wish the immigration policy was changed to give more equal chance of legal immigration rather than the shitshow we have right now.

iraphael 8y ago
I was actually wondering what the data considers "immigration". This shows no African countries light up until around the 90s but that's somewhat incorrectly categorizing influx of people into the US as it ignores "forced immigration" (kidnapping for slavery).
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  This visualization starts in 1820, so it misses out on the time period when most slaves were brought into the country. The US banned the importation of slaves in 1808 and made it a capital offense in 1820. Some were smuggled in illegally after that, but not in the enormous quantities that they previously had been.

Alex3917 8y ago

According to Wikipedia the vast majority of immigrants from Africa are not in fact coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_Uni...

Symmetry 8y ago

I imagined more of a discontinuity with the passage of the 1924 immigration restriction act to prevent all those "red" Italians from entering the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

temp-dude-87844 8y ago

Can anyone point me to low bias, nonpartisan analyses about the US immigrant population by practically meaningful cohorts? These sites that rehash aggregate numbers are the most widespread, and the subtext on sites like this is that they provide insightful portrait into who immigrants are -- but this is an incomplete picture that speaks nothing of their admission category and conditions, their fates in the States, their position on socioeconomic metrics by year since their entry. A while back, I was looking for data to quantify the distinction of "Ellis Island"-style open application immigration, vs. the precondition-gated system we have today. I was also trying to understand the socioeconomic differences between employment/skill-based immigrants (of various admission categories) and family-based immigrants. But official government sources are spread across multiple agencies, and the cohorts are set in a way that isn't helpful in disaggregating superficially similar people with very different outcomes. In my observations, pro-immigration groups tend to publish data that is difficult to disaggregate (example: this data sheet on 'Profile of the Unauthorized Population: California' [1] by the Migration Policy Institute), while groups that want to restrict immigration (Center for Immigration Studies, The Heritage Foundation) have better cohorts with more practical relevance, but the less flattering data is used by them to justify their various restrictive policies, and their bias raises concerns about their veracity. It's a challenge to find a source that hits the middle ground. [1] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/CA https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-...

refurb 8y ago
Are you looking for recent data? USCIS publishes data about admission to the US by visa category (family, skilled, unskilled, refuge, etc) in quite a lot of detail.
- temp-dude-87844 8y ago
  This is a good primary source -- relevant example: 'Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2016', Table 9 [1]. [1] https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/table9 https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2016/tab...

christophclarke 8y ago

Here is the source of the animation (looks much nicer, and interactive) http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/ http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/

RightMillennial 8y ago

It's interesting that Russian immigration to the U.S. drastically drops around 1920 which is half way through the Russian Civil War.

gandhium 8y ago
Soviet regime got to stop those 'enemies of the state fleeing wrath of the proletariat'. Soviets introduced exit visa back in 1925, so probably that was a reason of that drop.

drderidder 8y ago

It's an interesting visualization but gives only one side of the picture. Emigration away from the US happens increasingly as well.

timewarrior 8y ago

I built a company and sold it to Dropbox. Building another company to cure Cancer using AI. Leadership positions at various big companies. Wrote a book about Entrepreneurship which is part of an Executive MBA program. Built the biggest social network to come out of India. Because I am from India, I would never get a Green Card through EB-2 (though I have two approved EB-2 petitions). Yesterday, USCIS denied my EB-1 petition using argument which are against the law. Now I have to leave US :( I have an approved O-1 (extraordinary ability), but apparently, once you have filed for a Green Card Adjustment of Status, you can't get a visa stamp for anything other than H-1. Not sure if I can come back!

oblio 8y ago
Sorry for your misfortune. But at this point, wouldn't it just make sense for you to just go to a country which is more welcoming?
- timewarrior 8y ago
  Yes. Couldn't agree more!
- Karishma1234 8y ago
  Yes, this is a good strategy. Move the capital and jobs to some other country. Singapore or Canada are a good options that have been used by my other Indian friends.
galieos_ghost 8y ago
US was built on taking the best and brightest from other countries and giving them an environment to thrive, it benefited the individual and the country as well. I would love for you to become a citizen but for some reason Democrats have chosen to punish talented people who follow the law in favor of uneducated criminals. The US will continue losing ground if we continue with current immigration policies The biggest irony is that Silicon Valley companies support this. Imagine Google simply hiring anyone who walked onto Googleplex and removed all hiring standards for engineering positions, it would be suicidal. That's the equivalent to our current immigration strategy.

rodionos 8y ago

U.S. expatriation numbers are down YoY, by the way: https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/tree/master/Expatriation#annual-data https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-cases/tree/master/Expatr...