Between the Syrian refugee crisis and Trump’s offensive remarks, immigration has been in the news a lot lately. Turning that focus on U.S. history, PEW Research pulled together the data on U.S. immigrants since 1850, looking at the place of birth for the largest group in each state.
While the largest immigrant group moving to the U.S. today hail from Mexico, that hasn’t aways been the case.
One century ago the U.S. was seeing a wave of 18.2 million immigrants, largely from Europe. In 1910, Germans accounted for 19% of all immigrants to the United States, making it the top country of birth for U.S. immigrants.
Today that has clearly changed, with the largest wave of immigration coming from a single country in U.S. history–Mexico is now the birthplace of 28% (or 11.6 million) of all immigrants in the U.S.
The U.S. remains the top destination in the world for immigrants.
See more numbers on the topic at PEW Research.