# Explain the distribution of US immigrants. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 21, 2014, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658 "2014-07-21T12:36:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/41 "2014-07-23T11:07:23Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It’s Portuguese… All languages are impossible to understand unless you are native. Bad example for that: Portuguese is so understandable to Spanish speakers that on occasion Portuguese documentaries or interviews are shown on Spanish TV without any subtitles or only clarification ones (such as spelling out an acronym). Definitely understandable to speakers of Galego, and I hear from Brazilian friends that they had no problems communicating in Italy. “I don’t understand it” is a long way from meaning the same as “it’s incomprehensible”. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2014, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/42 "2014-07-23T11:27:28Z")
I wrote: \> English - it’s like Frenchmen ruled over a group of West Germanic peoples who had \> invaded a Celtic area and were later invaded by a West Germanic people and who \> then later invaded several areas with speakers of various other peoples. I meant: \> English - it’s like Frenchmen ruled over a group of West Germanic peoples who had \> invaded a Celtic area and were later invaded by a North Germanic people and who \> then later invaded several areas with speakers of various other peoples. Yeah, you’re right, Nava. I needed to figure out how to reply to Shagnasty without going into a lot of detail. I wanted to express how bizarre his statement is about how Portuguese is impossible to understand unless you’re native. First, it’s what true of any language. Unless you’ve learned the language, of course you don’t understand it. You could be a native speaker or you could have learned it from classes, etc. There are also cases like Portuguese and Spanish that are a little too far apart to be just dialects of a single language and yet close enough that speakers can understand some of what the other says. But in any case, Shagnasty made it sound like Portuguese was this obscure language that we might not know anything about. It’s the sixth most common language in the world. ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/43 "2014-07-24T02:04:51Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > This data is very flawed, because it presumes one ethnicity per person when that in fact is far from the case. It’s the equivalent of using the Y-chromosome to paint a complete picture. Further, if the ancestry is more than a few generations back, many people are unclear. My grandfather always said he was Irish, which was partly true, but mostly (in a genetic sense) to entirely (in a cultural sense) false. Of my four grand parents one was born in Germany, calling herself a Jew, one was born in Sweden, two born in the USA of #1 English and Irish parents, and the other french Canadian and Menominee Indian. I grew up calling myself Jewish because that Grandma was the most vocal, but after about age 17 I started and continue to declare myself as White American. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/44 "2014-07-24T02:12:29Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Here’s a map of the distribution of ethnic groups in the U.S.: > > [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1024px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1024px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg) > > Germans are spread all over the U.S., but particularly in the upper half of the country, so saying that they gravitated to the upper Midwest isn’t very accurate. Poles are spread over many cities, not just Detroit. The only county with a plurality of Poles is in Pennsylvania. You might want to consult that map before asking this question. Metro Detroit has a lot of Poles, as does Chicago, but I believe the greatest concentration is in the Buffalo metro area. Poles are generally spread all around the Great Lakes region. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2014, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/45 "2014-07-24T03:11:34Z")
Here are various tables and charts of the Polish population of American cities and a history of Poles in the U.S.: > **[List of U.S. cities with large Polish-American populations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_large_Polish_American_populations)** > > U.S. cities and communities with large Polish American populations are largely concentrated in the Upper Midwestern United States, Chicago metropolitan area and the New York metropolitan area, with Wisconsin accounting for the largest number of communities with large Polish populations. > The following cities and municipalities are among those that have 10,000 or more residents who are of Polish ancestry (in descending order by Polish population): > The following communities have more than 30% of... [http://www.epodunk.com/ancestry/Polish.html](http://www.epodunk.com/ancestry/Polish.html) > **[History of Poles in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Poles_in_the_United_States)** > > The history of Poles in the United States dates to the American Colonial era. Poles have lived in present-day United States territories for over 400 years—since 1608. There are 10 million Americans of Polish descent in the U.S. today. Polish Americans have always been the largest group of Slavic origin in the United States. > Historians divide Polish American immigration into three "waves", the largest from 1870 to 1914, a second after World War II, and a third after Poland's independence in 198... ---
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/46 "2014-07-25T01:43:53Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > Only a small % of the Hispanics in the southwest have known ancestry among people who lived there when it was part of Mexico. Those areas were very sparsely populated at the time. A large % are immigrants or the children of immigrants. That is true in many places, such as Southern California or Arizona, but in New Mexico, there were about 30,000-40,000 Hispanos there at the time of annexation. There are certainly at least half a million descendants there now (though they often identify as Spanish rather than Mexican…though that is a contentious issue, and to be blunt, they were essentially one of many Mexican regional groups). This is also the case in far South Texas too. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/47 "2014-07-25T02:00:16Z")
> [@syncrolecyne](#): > > That is true in many places, such as Southern California or Arizona, but in New Mexico, there were about 30,000-40,000 Hispanos there at the time of annexation. There are certainly at least half a million descendants there now (though they often identify as Spanish rather than Mexican…though that is a contentious issue, and to be blunt, they were essentially one of many Mexican regional groups). This is also the case in far South Texas too. Yes but that kind of descendant math can be applied over longer periods to say, accurately, that remarkably high %'s of people share even one particular ancestor. There are families all over the SW which know their genealogy and identify with a particular ancestor who lived there when it was part of Mexico, but the way that kind of statement is often put about parts of the US that were once part of Mexico ‘the Anglo’s there are the immigrants not the Hispanics’ is more inaccurate than accurate in general, I think. Also though I wouldn’t reject your supposition particularly, I wonder what actual proof of that we could find of a particular number (for example, do we know that most families who lived in NM pre Mexican War didn’t later migrate someplace else to be replaced later by still late migrants back in?, etc). ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2014, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/48 "2014-07-25T02:21:10Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > I wrote: > > \> English - it’s like Frenchmen ruled over a group of West Germanic peoples who had > \> invaded a Celtic area and were later invaded by a West Germanic people and who > \> then later invaded several areas with speakers of various other peoples. > > I meant: > > \> English - it’s like Frenchmen ruled over a group of West Germanic peoples who had > \> invaded a Celtic area and were later invaded by a North Germanic people and who > \> then later invaded several areas with speakers of various other peoples. > > Yeah, you’re right, Nava. I needed to figure out how to reply to Shagnasty without going into a lot of detail. I wanted to express how bizarre his statement is about how Portuguese is impossible to understand unless you’re native. First, it’s what true of any language. Unless you’ve learned the language, of course you don’t understand it. You could be a native speaker or you could have learned it from classes, etc. There are also cases like Portuguese and Spanish that are a little too far apart to be just dialects of a single language and yet close enough that speakers can understand some of what the other says. But in any case, Shagnasty made it sound like Portuguese was this obscure language that we might not know anything about. It’s the sixth most common language in the world. I was talking about the accent and general pronunciation. It is completely different from the other Romance languages in that regard although they are closely related in general. I used to be conversant in Spanish enough to give lectures and take college level oral tests using nothing but Spanish and can still speak it to some degree if someone speaks slowly enough and uses common words. The same is true with French and Italian to a lesser degree even though I have never studied those formally. I can read Portuguese just fine for simple matters but the pronunciation of native Portuguese speakers always leaves me baffled (sometimes even when they are speaking English like a few of my older and more comical coworkers). I am not the only person to notice that Portuguese sounds superficially more like a Slavic language than a Romance language to people that aren’t proficient in either of them. > **[Google](https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHMG_enUS291&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=does%20portuguese%20sound%20like%20russian)** > > Search the world's information, including webpages, images, videos and more. Google has many special features to help you find exactly what you're looking for. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2014, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/49 "2014-08-30T13:57:45Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > A number of years ago I saw a book which would exactly answer the OP. It was an atlas of immigration. Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of it and it was long enough ago it wouldn’t have some of the newer immigrant groups such as Somalis. That probably was the work of Eugene Turner and James Allen, two cultural geographers at Cal State Northridge. (Their first atlas was called _We the People: An Atlas of America’s Ethnic Diversity_). For several decades they they’ve been mapping ethnic breakdowns of the country, especially of the Los Angeles area, using Census and other data. They were two of the earliest to use computerized data to generate detailed maps. (Somehow I got introduced to them when I was driving taxi, and Allen asked me to give him a tour of the various ethnic enclaves of East Hollywood, where about 50 different languages are spoken in homes.) One of their most interesting discoveries in their early work was that [Cerritos, CA was the most ethnically diverse city in the nation](http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-10/news/mn-1036_1_ethnic-diversity). This was because they didn’t just group all “Asians” together, but actually broke them down into their many different backgrounds. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2014, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/50 "2014-08-30T14:28:43Z")
I’ll add one more voice to say that American ethnic identity can be complicated. The ethnic culture I identify most strongly with is Irish, in part because that’s what my favorite grandparent mostly was. But I’m more Italian than Irish, and more German than those two combined. At least, that’s the case based on what I know of my ancestry, but some of that German might actually be French (some ancestors came from one of those long-contested border regions), and my “German” surname might actually be originally Hungarian. And my most recent immigrant ancestors were the Italian branch, while my first immigrant ancestor was one of the Irish ones, so in that sense maybe I’m “more Italian”. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/51 "2014-08-30T16:24:30Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > At one time, so I read, an actual majority of the population of (what’s now the state of) Idaho was Chinese, railroad laborers. But few Chinese Americans now count any of those people among their ancestors: it was a small absolute number swamped by immigration since the 1960’s. Nope. First, the Chinese laborers were used most intensely on the Pacific side of the Transcontinental Railroad which met in Utah and did not go through Idaho. Here, I [found this](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/idaho-history-and-heritage-177411856/?no-ist) > [@](#): > > At one time, during the Gold Rush of the early 1800s, Idaho’s population was one-quarter Chinese. By 1870, a majority of all Idaho miners were Chinese. So, a majority of miners, sure, but not an actual majority of the population. Here’s [another](http://www.visitidaho.org/press/about/idaho_history.htm) > [@](#): > > By 1870 Idaho’s population was all of 17,000; a decade later it would be 32,000. My mother’s family grew up in southern Idaho as part of the Mormon settlers. > [@Chronos](#): > > I’ll add one more voice to say that American ethnic identity can be complicated. The ethnic culture I identify most strongly with is Irish, in part because that’s what my favorite grandparent mostly was. But I’m more Italian than Irish, and more German than those two combined. I’m a mutt as well. My maternal grandfather was of Danish decent, but maternal grandmother was mixed English and “other;” on my father’s side there are too many: German, English, French and whatever. I wouldn’t be able to label myself as any particular ethnic group. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2014, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658/52 "2014-08-30T16:51:37Z")
> [@Surreal](#): > > A large portion are Scots-Irish “Scotch-Irish”, whether correct or not, gets more Google hits than Scots-Irish. A more explicit term might be Ulster Presbyterians. There were very many of these immigrants in the early and mid 18th century. Andrew Jackson, for example, was a Presbyterian whose parents emigrated from Ulster shortly before the future President was born. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-distribution-of-us-immigrants/693658.md?page=2)