Immigration Data Updated On PolicyMap

Immigrant-Statue_1
Source: National Park Service

If you provide services for immigrant groups, and need geographic information about what immigrants are in your community, or where immigrants from specific countries live, you can use PolicyMap’s immigration data from the Department of Homeland Security. This data provides information on legal permanent residents, commonly known as green card holders. We include specific data on the top fifteen countries that people are immigrating from. This year’s update has a few new things:

  • New data for 2012.
  • New countries, like Iraq and Burma.
  • Data at the metro area level, for top metro areas.

The data shows the number of green card holders, as well as two distinct percentage calculations. These percents can be confusing, so here’s a quick explanation of their differences:

%: This shows the percentage of green card holders in the whole U.S. from a specific country who live in a given state or MSA. For example, of all Haitians to receive U.S. green cards in 2012, 8.38% live in Massachusetts. This is good for finding where in the U.S. specific groups live.

% 2: This shows the percentage of all green card holders, in a specific state or MSA, who come from a specific country. For example, in Michigan, 17.19% of all the green card recipients were born in Iraq. This is good for finding what groups live in areas you’re interested in.

This data is available to the public, and is in the Demographics menu.