Immigration to the U.S. from 1950 to the Present

Olga Zverovich (ozverov@fas.harvard.edu)
Yang Gao (gao@fas.harvard.edu)

Project Overview

As U.S. immigrants, we were interested to learn how immigration to the U.S. from other countries in the world changed our time. Thus, our motivating questions are: What are the immigration patterns of the past and present? How do they change? How do immigration patterns of different countries compare?

Features of Our Visualization

The major goal of our visualization was to show immigration trends of individual countries and to compare trends of different countries. We have a map of the world with major countries marked on it. Hovering over a country displays its name and an arrow pointing from the location of the country on the map to the US. The thickness and color of the arrow encode immigration volume. A time slider appears on the bottom. The slider can be moved by using the left and right arrow keys, as well as by using the mouse. When a country is hovered over or clicked on it, a bar chart appears on the right showing the number of immigrants per year from that country to the US. (We took the average annual immigration number for each decade.) The bar for the current year (as indicated on the slider) is highlighted and the number is displayed underneath the country's name and flag. When one country is clicked, hovering over a second country shows the same information for the second country, enabling side-by-side comparison of data. The keys are linked to the data.

There is also a cartogram view, which shows immigration numbers encoded by area (of squares). Hovering over a country displays the bar chart on the right, and all countries that have similar immigration volumes are highlighted.

In the lower righthand corner, there is a "More Data" button. Clicking it causes the map/cartogram to become smaller and three bar charts to appear for the selected country: one as before, one showing population density over time, and one showing immigration rate per thousand immigrants to the US over time. This enables analysis for correlation. The flag become clickable in More Data mode and links to the CIA world factbook when clicked.

We have added a scented widget below the slider, showing the total number of immigrants to the U.S. for each given year.

Screenshots