Interactive map showing immigration over the past 130 years

[Nhoj]

I ran across this on another site and found it quite fascinating.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html

[Alcon]

Cool find, although I wish they also percentage-shaded the sub-maps instead of using the bubble system only.

[Verily]

Cool find, although I wish they also percentage-shaded the sub-maps instead of using the bubble system only.

The NYT loves the bubble system. It annoys me.

Anyway, lots of interesting stuff. I echo the need for percentage maps for the individual countries. I did the calculations, though, and Bergen County has the highest percentage of Korean immigrants in the country, although Queens, Orange County and LA County have larger absolute numbers. Middlesex County, NJ has by far the largest Indian immigrant population by percent, although Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County) beats it in absolute numbers.

[jimrtex]

Cool find, although I wish they also percentage-shaded the sub-maps instead of using the bubble system only.

Some interesting military brides/children born overseas to military.   See Colorado Springs, CO; Killeen, TX; Columbus, Ga, Wilmington, NC, Lawton, OK for Korean and German.  Filipino around San Diego, CA; Pensacola, Norfolk.

Also Canadian diffusion across border.

The overview is odd in that it counts Germans as Eastern European.

[Smid]

Cool find, although I wish they also percentage-shaded the sub-maps instead of using the bubble system only.

The NYT loves the bubble system. It annoys me.

The perfect example as to why the bubble system fails is looking at Cuban immigration from 1960 to presently. The largest bubble is so large that it envelopes several other bubbles and you can't see which county it belongs to. It just creates clutter.

[Verily]

Cool find, although I wish they also percentage-shaded the sub-maps instead of using the bubble system only.

The NYT loves the bubble system. It annoys me.

The perfect example as to why the bubble system fails is looking at Cuban immigration from 1960 to presently. The largest bubble is so large that it envelopes several other bubbles and you can't see which county it belongs to. It just creates clutter.

You can reduce the average bubble size with the slider on the right. That helps when combined with zooming in. Still a problem for places with small counties, especially the NYC area (ironic, considering it's the NYT).

[Verily]

The patterns for Swedish immigration are... odd. Tons of Swedes in southeastern MN in 1880, but they all disappear by 1890. Weird.

[Brittain33]

The patterns for Swedish immigration are... odd. Tons of Swedes in southeastern MN in 1880, but they all disappear by 1890. Weird.

Could they have been recording Norwegians as Swedes?

[Verily]

The patterns for Swedish immigration are... odd. Tons of Swedes in southeastern MN in 1880, but they all disappear by 1890. Weird.

Could they have been recording Norwegians as Swedes?

Hmmm... very possible. They don't have separate data for Norway in 1880, which makes it looks more likely. Sweden-Norway broke up in 1905, though.

[jimrtex]

The patterns for Swedish immigration are... odd. Tons of Swedes in southeastern MN in 1880, but they all disappear by 1890. Weird.

Could they have been recording Norwegians as Swedes?

Hmmm... very possible. They don't have separate data for Norway in 1880, which makes it looks more likely. Sweden-Norway broke up in 1905, though.

The Census Report for 1880 gave a finer breakdown on nativity for states than it did for counties.

For counties it was split out by British America, England&Wales, Ireland, Scotland, German Empire, France, Sweden&Norway, and two wild cards which depended on the State.

For States, Sweden and Norway were separate, and for example, German Empire was split into 15 separate groups, so the aggregation of Sweden&Norway does not appear to be wholly based on political definitions.  In 1880, Minnesota had 62K from Norway and 39K from Sweden.

The census report did use the finer breakdown for larger cities, which included Minneapolis and St. Paul.  In 1880 Minneapolis had 47K, and St.Paul 41K; both had about 15K foreign born.  For Minneapolis largest groups were Sweden 3.2K, British America 3.1K, Norway 2.7K, German Empire 2.3K, and Ireland 1.8K.  For St. Paul: German Empire 5.0K, Ireland 3.6K, Sweden 1.9K, British America 1.6K, and Norway 0.7K.  So the two cities reverse the statewide distribution.

In 1890, the county distribution was much finer, and Norway and Sweden were separately tabulated.

[War on Want]

It is interesting that there are so many Canadian immigrants in my area. I knew there were quite a few but not enough to be the largest immigrant group.