
Visualizing Two Centuries of U.S. Immigration - thisisit
http://www.visualcapitalist.com/two-centuries-of-immigration/
======
timewarrior
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
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?

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Karishma1234
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.

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lgbr
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_legisl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Bismarck#Early_legislation)
2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_from_Mexico#Recent_trend_reversal_in_migration_Mexico-U.S).

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elvirs
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.

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dragonwriter
The CIA mostly doesn't decide that kind of thing, they just implement
decisions made in the White House.

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Blackstone4
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?

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ed_balls
Apart from working in tech. Is there a reason to move to US for an average
bloke?

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Blackstone4
If you are in highly educated, able to work, and are in the right field (i.e.
software), life for the majority of individuals who fall into this category is
better in the US than many other countries. On the other hand if you're dirt
poor, have no education, bad health.... you may be better off in Scandinavia
or Western Europe.

This includes tech, engineering and other professions. For instance you can
get a graduate mechanical engineering job and start earning ~$70k and live in
an area where housing costs ~$150k-$200k for a small, detached, ~2-3 bedroom
house with garage and garden (2.85x ratio). You can also get amazing weather
:)

Mechanical engineers in the UK start on ~£25k in areas where a small house
will cost £300k-£400k. That's a ratio of pay to house price of 16x versus 2.9x
in the US. Anecdotal I know but powerful.

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arojn
Scandinavia is, somewhat contrary to popular belief, great if you are upper-
middle class. A similar life in the US would be prohibitively expensive. The
problem is if you are middle class and paying for many system that you might
not in effect be able to use.

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Melchizedek
From what I've seen, the truth is the exact opposite (living in Sweden,
visiting the US). Sweden is only good if you live on welfare or have a "bad"
job (where the salary is inflated due to unions, plus you might get welfare).

Upper middle class people in the US are _so much_ better off - there is really
no comparison. If average Swedes only knew how poor they really are...

~~~
arojn
The average Swede isn't upper-middle class, at least not by Swedish standards.
If you are upper-middle class in Sweden you have a lot of freedom that upper-
middle class people in the US don't necessarily have.

In Sweden you can study cost-free. You can get a second, or third, degree from
reputable school, even online. That makes it easy to change careers or to stay
competitive.

If you are established in Sweden you are going to have very high financial
security and low living costs. Almost anyone that is upper-middle class in
Sweden can take a year off to, say, start a business without any major
consequences.

Just in general upper-middle class people in Sweden have a lot more quality of
life and time. 40 hour weeks, employment protection, flat hierarchies, short
commute, long vacations, summer homes etc.

I personally have nothing against people moving to the US. Especially if you
are middle-class and in your twenties it can be a good idea. But as soon as
you have kids your costs are going to rise significantly, your opportunities
are going to decrease or both.

I would be interesting to hear what you think is better in the US for someone
upper-middle class.

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christophclarke
Here is the source of the animation (looks much nicer, and interactive)

[http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-
map/](http://metrocosm.com/animated-immigration-map/)

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temp-dude-87844
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-...](https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-
population/state/CA)

~~~
refurb
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
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/tab...](https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-
statistics/yearbook/2016/table9)

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mxfh
_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)

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

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loudmax
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.

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Mediterraneo10
"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.

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Symmetry
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)

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willvarfar
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.

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mieseratte
> 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#Dra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War#Draft_dodgers)

~~~
refurb
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada#Sources_of_immigration)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Origin)

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elvirs
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
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
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.

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Alex3917
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_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_immigration_to_the_United_States)

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rodionos
U.S. expatriation numbers are down YoY, by the way:

[https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-
cases/tree/master/Expatr...](https://github.com/axibase/atsd-use-
cases/tree/master/Expatriation#annual-data)

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perpetualpatzer
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.

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

~~~
gandhium
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.

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

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bruceb
"An important note. This data excludes forced migration (slavery) and illegal
immigration."

So it doesn't give the full picture.

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Cthulhu_
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
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.

