This is an interesting graphic which shows the demographics of the non-native population of the United States has varied over time. Axios summarizes the changes over time thusly:
- For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the vast majority of immigrants came from Western and Northern Europe. The Irish fled famine, the Germans fled political instability, and Italians primarily wanted better economic opportunity.
- The 1965 act ended a program that allowed Mexicans to work on U.S. farms but remain residents of Mexico. That changed the nature of immigration from Mexico and from Central America "to primarily unauthorized," Batalova says.
- In 1986, the U.S. gave legal status to almost 3 million undocumented immigrants — an overwhelming majority of them from Mexico. These new green card holders could then sponsor additional family members.
- There has been a surge of Central American asylum seekers in the U.S. over the past several years as political chaos, poverty and violence have ravaged many of those nations.
- New laws also opened the door to immigration from Asia — initially from India and Taiwan, and later China.
- Following the Vietnam War, there was an influx of Vietnamese people and other citizens of the region who fled to the U.S. as refugees.
- Most recently, there's been a wave of immigration from African countries that began in the 1990s and 2000s for a wide variety of economic, political and humanitarian reasons.
hat/tip: Axios
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