Visualization: 200 years of immigration to the United States - from Russians to Chinese

In America, it is generally accepted that the main flow of immigrants comes to the country from Mexico. Natalia Bronstein's visualization proves that this is not the case. She processed official data on the countries of origin of immigrants to the United States over the past 200 years and created a graph (interactive version - at her website), where you can trace the flow of immigrants from, for example, Russia. The peak occurred in 1909 - 1919, when more than a million “Russians” (indicated in red) came to America and received residence permits.

The “jumper” in the graph clearly shows how two American laws transformed the structure of immigration to the United States.

First, the National Act of the 1924 of the Year (the National Origins Act) established entry quotas based on origin and practically prohibited migration from Asia.

Then the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 abolished the quotas. New immigration policies now placed an emphasis on uniting families and attracting skilled workers. After this act, the structure of immigration radically changed: if before 1965, the majority of immigrants were Europeans, after that they became immigrants from Latin America and Asia.

Interestingly, the author did a similar visualization by country of origin. Israeli citizens - from 1948 to 2011.