Looking at immigration

Since immigration policy has been much in the news at both the national and state level, I've put together a few maps looking at the distribution of immigrants in Minnesota, using figures drawn from census data.

These maps do not show the distribution of illegal immigrants -- instead, they show everyone who was not born a citizen, including people who are now citizens, legal immigrants with green cards, foreign students on student visas, and illegal immigrants. I've done this because I wanted the historical comparisons -- the 1980 and 1990 censuses did not make any distinctions among these groups.

Also, bear in mind that the Census Bureau is more likely to undercount undocumented immigrants than any other sector of the population, despite its best efforts. Thus, all of these figures are problematic. However, even though the numbers themselves are questionable, I think that the comparisons across geographic areas provide food for thought. (By this, I mean that while we might not really know how many immigrants are in Dakota and Anoka counties, we can hopefully get a decent idea of whether one county is dealing with a much larger immigrant population than the other.)

Let's start with a statewide historical look:

Not surprisingly, we see an increase in the number of immigrants over time across most of the state. The exception is the Iron Range, which is probably related to the decline in employment opportunities as industries like mining and timbering have become increasingly mechanized. Perhaps most interesting is the marked increase in foreign-born residents in several counties outside the Twin Cities, notably Nobles County (9.0% foreign born in 2000) and Watonwan County (8.0% foreign born). Here's a closer look at the 2000 data for these counties, along with Olmsted (7.9%).

Note that these maps -- unlike the 1980-2000 state maps above -- are showing population totals, not percentages. I've also compressed together values at the upper end of the scale, which tends to give smaller numbers more "weight" graphically. I wanted all of the maps to use the same coloring scheme, and I needed to come up with something that would work in urban, suburban, and rural demographic contexts. I think that this is a decent compromise, but all the same I encourage you to pay close attention to the keys as you look at the maps. (Incidentally, I hope you will find these maps a lot cleaner than the ones in previous posts -- I've refined my technique for exporting the maps to JPG.)

Now, let's look at the metro area. First, let me clarify what should be obvious -- the maps below are not on the same scale as the individual county maps above (which are all on the same scale as each other). We're looking at a larger geographic area here. Also, I've been relying for a bit too long on a map of the census-defined 'urbanized area' around the Twin Cities which I put in one of my earliest posts. It's long past time to present another map of population density for the metro area so that you can place my other maps in context. So we'll start with that:

As one would expect from the state level maps above, we see substantial increases in Minneapolis and St. Paul. However, the increases in the suburbs are also noteworthy -- particularly in the southern and western suburbs.

I don't think there's really enough information here to draw many conclusions from these maps; we can't use this information to determine what countries these folks come from, how long they've been here, whether they can vote, etc. But as I said, I think there's some interesting food for thought here. In fact, I thought it would be worthwhile to redo the 2000 data with some different geographic identifiers. See what you think:

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(Blue and red numbers represent DFL and GOP seats, respectively.)

Updated: Whoops, used the wrong file for this last map when I first put it up -- I had the party labels for the 2003-04 legislature, not the current one. I've corrected it, though I'm embarrassed I didn't catch it immediately. Thanks to Twin City Sidewalks in the comments.

posted by DK @ 11:30 PM permalink