This is an amazing chart! I wish you’d used great circles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_circle) though.
Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
11–20 of 114 posts
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#12Surprised me how much came from Canada -- has that been a thing, or is Canada a proxy for other countries?
Surprised me how much came from Canada -- has that been a thing
Looking at the absolute number of immigrants per year skews things a bit in Canada's favour; the low barrier to movement means that there's relatively more Canadians who live in the USA for short durations.
I'm sure that Canada is a much smaller proportion of the stock of immigrants than than its proportion of the annual inflow.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#13Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
As a 4th generation son of a Midwest-bound German immigrant - it was the fertile land which drew many of them.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#14Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#/media/File:C...
The light blue counties are the ones with German being the most commonly reported ancestry during the 2000 census.
Personal note: Being from the Dakotas originally, it's interesting seeing some of my great-grandparents' backgrounds nearby: Native American, German, Norwegian, Finnish (further away), plus a few others that aren't nearby.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#15I'd like to see this as a percentage of the world population since the increase over time makes it hard to see exactly what's happening.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#16Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
German-Americans are (were?) the largest group in the US. It almost seems a miracle that German didn't become the main language in the US. I guess that since the dominant groups were English-speaking they had to adapt in order to get jobs.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#17Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
I think most white Americans identify as Irish first and then German second. However, a lot of German heritage was suppressed following anti-German sentiment during WWI and WWII.
Edit: it's actually the other way around. German is the most common ancestry for white people in America.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#18I love new ways to express data. But, as I see animations like this I become a little anxious as I'd like to absorb the information, but if I look too closely in one area then I risk missing a bigger pattern or trend. After watching, I'm convinced that a good old line chart would have been a better representation of the data. Perhaps with some added dynamic behaviour.
I really wanted to see both /where/ immigration was going /to/ and also where it was from. Like color mixing and destinations.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#19Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
German-Americans are (were?) the largest group in the US. It almost seems a miracle that German didn't become the main language in the US. I guess that since the dominant groups were English-speaking they had to adapt in order to get jobs.
While it was later on, World War I had a very large impact in terms of getting rid of the German language (and other cultural aspects) in the US.
Re: Show HN: Map of immigration to the U.S. since 1820
#20Didn't know so much Germans came to the US back in the days.
The data is a bit skewed, because the biggest flow is in the 19th century, but it shows the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany (1949) not the German Confederation (1815), which included Austria (which itself was much bigger, including Hungary etc.) and Prussia (which was basically where Poland is today).
There really was no "Germany" back then, just German speaking states, which fought wars against each other, had different religions and so on. The reason they united was basically because they hated Napoleon more than each other.