Sunday, February 22, 2015

Immigration in Maps

Vox features immigration in one of their "X# of maps that explain [subject]" posts.  One of the maps was this cool one:

and there was this cool gif (click to enlarge):

Finally, there was this historical note:
The bottom line: before 1965, Germany sent more immigrants to America than anyone else; after 1965, Mexico did.
Here's why: from World War I to 1965, the immigration system was designed, essentially, to keep the United States white. Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg has called it "unbelievable in its clarity of racism." Each country was given a certain quota of immigrants who were allowed to come to the United States each year, based on who'd been in the country in 1890.
Combined with existing laws that prevented any Asian Americans from coming into the country, the laws of the 1920s basically froze the demographics of the immigrant population in place until 1965.
American history.  So classy.

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