Where America's Immigrants Came From, 1820–2019

About this chart

The picture is the people who became lawful permanent residents, stacked: time runs left to right, the height at any decade is the total, and the total is cut into bands, one for each region, so the thickness of a band is that region's amount and the top edge is the whole. The bands keep one order from bottom to top, so a band can be followed as it widens or thins. The value scale grows as the picture is drawn: the early decades are drawn at a readable height, and the picture zooms out as the total climbs, with the gridlines redrawn at round numbers as it goes. Each band is labelled at the leading edge with its current amount and share; on a phone held upright a table below the picture gives them. The animation draws the decades in over forty-one seconds, holds on the latest for three seconds, and loops. The scrubber pauses on any decade, and the speed can be changed in the controls.

Method

Each decade's new lawful permanent residents are counted by the region they came from and stacked: Europe; Canada; Mexico; the Caribbean, Central America and South America; Asia; and Africa, Oceania and people whose region was not specified. The figures are the Department of Homeland Security's 2019 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Table 2, which counts persons by decade from 1820 and by year from 2010; the 2010s are the sum of those ten years, and the six regions add up exactly to the table's total in every decade. The records change over two centuries, and the table's own notes say how: before 1906 they give country of origin and from 1906 country of last residence; from 1820 to 1867 they count passengers arriving at seaports, later arriving immigrants, and from the 1890s immigrants admitted for permanent residence; arrivals by land were not fully counted until 1908, and there are no figures for Canada or Mexico from 1886 to 1893; country borders move over the period. The 1980s and 1990s include people who gained permanent residence under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Three notes mark moments found in the data: Europe's largest decade (the 1900s), the steepest fall from one decade to the next (the 1930s), and the first decade in which more came from Asia than from Europe (the 1970s). The series ends with the 2010s, the last complete decade the table covers. The value scale grows as the decades are drawn and never shrinks, so the low decades that follow a high one are drawn against the earlier scale.

Data sources

• DHS Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2019 — Table 2, Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status by Region and Selected Country of Last Residence: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019

Updated the 2010s

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