Where Are Americans Born? An Analysis of U.S. Census Data from 1850 – 2020
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> Since the 1960s, Florida has seen one of the largest increases in immigrants from outside the US of any state
> Most of these newcomers are from the Caribbean–particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico.
I wouldn't say it's like being born in Canada, considering Puerto Rico is on the edges of what it means to be "the United States." As you noted, those born in PR are US citizens on that basis alone, and certain other elements of the US Constitution apply to Puerto Rico as well. Perhaps ironically, this seems to not allow PR the same sovereignty that the 50 states enjoy over the federal government. In an edge case like this, some disagreement is expected and there might be a more nuanced characterization of this situation.
People born in Puerto Rico are born in US territory, subject only to US sovereign laws, with a natural right to US citizenship, and no equivalent right to citizenship of any other sovereign country. There aren't many more cut-and-dried definitions of being born 'in the US' than that.
Remember, this article is trying to answer the question 'where were US citizens who live in particular parts of the US born?'[1].
To that question, for Texas resident American Ted Cruz, for example, we would answer 'Canada' - he counts as one of the Texans who were born outside the US, regardless of his citizenship status at birth. I personally naturalized later, but I also count myself among Americans who were born outside the US. Ted and I have that in common, if nothing else.
But Puerto Ricans who were born in Puerto Rico when it was part of the United States - i.e., any time after 1897 - were not born outside the US, so counting a Puerto Rican-born American who lives in Florida as born 'overseas' seems like a flat error to me.
[1] well, technically it's not completely clear that it's only counting US Citizens who are resident in a given state, because it is actually a survey of census data and, rather famously, the census does not actually ask you if you are a US citizen - it counts residents (and don't forget that the resident population of the US is not made up solely of 'citizens' and 'illegal immigrants'; residents also include a vast number of noncitizen resident legal immigrants). I mean, the headline claims it's a count of where 'Americans' were born, which I guess Canadians and Brazilians might dispute...
Right, I meant this as an unrelated aside I found interesting due to some perceived irony. I don't think I made that sufficiently clear in my original comment, unfortunately.
I would generally agree with the rest of your comment as well, and that Puerto Rico should count as the US for the purposes of immigration/citizenship surveys, but I could maybe see why someone would feel otherwise based on its unique status.
The main page’s headline “Your Connecticut Personal Injury & Immigration Lawyers” so I guess we’re looking at some pretty upper funnel content.
Kudos for at least making it interesting.
Sometimes I think immigration patterns need more attention, as indicators of other things. The number of displaced persons/refugees worldwide is very high right now, for example.
As a minor thing, it makes me wonder about current political tensions in the US. Looking at some of these figures makes me wonder if we're living in more of an unusual era relative to the last couple of centuries than I've realized. Again, not with reference to immigrants per se, but with reference to whatever is associated with such magnitude of sociodemographic pattern change.
Iirc, most of the immigrants of the 1800s came from northern Europe. Most will be happier with a similar climate.
The growth of the South East didn't really take hold until air conditioning was popularized in the 1950s.
Racism is endemic throughout North America (especially if you consider indigenous/native, or Irish a race).
Slavery enabled larger farms in the inhospitable climate of the southeast and caribbean, but the existence of slavery there did not magically suppress immigration, the climate and subsequent economy did.
Where do you think racism isn't endemic?
But even setting aside the massive European colonial machinery, the average stay-at-home 18th or 19th century European already had plenty of ideas about what people of non-European races were like, from the stories of colonial wars, tales of explorers' encounters with savagery, and general mythology and exoticism of what the rest of the world must be like. And those opinions were not, let's say, generally very enlightened.
You can still be a racist even if you've never met someone of another race. If anything it's much easier that way.
Yes, very small fraction of Europeans was involved in that. Overwhelming majority never left their country, and often their village.
I can understand the areas that border the Pacific Ocean, but what was up with the high immigration to desert states like Nevada, Arizona, Utah, etc.? Who would want to immigrate from (presumably) the green British Isles to the desert? Western Oregon and Washington would be more their climate.
The high migration/immigration rates in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah in the late 1800s is relative. There was such a small amount of people that it was easy to have a large percentage from out of the US.
Who was immigrating there? Well one group was the Mormons. Apparently the Mormons were successful early on recruiting in Britain and those people migrated to the US and directly to Utah. Later that flowed over into Nevada and Arizona.
Also early on in these western territories, many people were probably going there to mine which may have attracted overseas people directly, not so concerned with green fertile land.
Final thought. The people immigrating from Britain and Ireland were looking for land. They probably had little idea what the southwest US was like except they had been told that there was lots of land available. When they got there it was totally different but there was land and water. Also many may have been going to California but stopped on the way for various reasons.
Edit: also those states are known for their population in deserts but they do have a lot of non deserts: forest,grassland, etc. And many early settlers stopped in those areas before geographic forces started the big desert settlements.
The North arguably was more racist towards those Irish immigrants at the time, because the North was dominated by English Protestants (WASPs) while the South had roots in being from the poorer parts of the British Isles, which is the origin of the Southern accent.
I have never found this to be true in my travels. Just because you see it on TV doesn’t mean that’s how it works in real life.
1) Ease of access. The North was geographically closer to Europe. In days when travel was slow, the difference was not trivial as it is now.
2) Climate. The median European latitude is roughly on par with Maine. The North would have felt more like home, while the South would have been very different (and not in a good way, in those days before AC!)
3) Northern Industrialization. The vast majority of the population (71%) and industry (~90%) was in the North. If you were looking for a job as an unskilled laborer, there was far more work up North.
4) Immigrant communities. In a sort of feedback loop, more immigrants in the North would naturally make it a more desirable destination for future immigrants. If you're a poor German immigrant who doesn't speak English, you'd feel more at home in a German neighborhood in New York City than in a Southern city which might not host a significant German community.
5) Slavery. Slavery undermined the market for free labor in numerous ways. First, most menial work was done by slaves. Second, slaveholders would 'lease' out their slaves to serve as laborers, with the pay going to the slaveholder. As a result, the going rate for labor was much lower in the South than in the North. Even if an immigrant aspired to farm their own land in the South, they would still be in competition with slave labor. In a sort of unvirtuous cycle, the existence of slavery meant that the only way to gain wealth in the South was to own slaves, which would have been cost-prohibitive for an immigrant.