A little less than five years ago, The Moderate Voice (TMV) published a five-part series titled “Reflections of a ‘Nation of Immigrants.”
The series was a compilation of stories submitted by TMV contributors and regular readers who themselves or their ancestors immigrated to “The Land of Promise.” The stories share how they and their ancestors became part of our “melting pot.”
In what today may be a poignant and sad reminder of ongoing events, the series started with reader “Susan,” and how her father, Moshe (Morris) Rappoport, was only 3 years old, when his parents — living in Kharkov in the Ukraine in 1922 — made the fateful decision to “come to America” to flee the Bolsheviks.
The series concluded with the colorful story of how one of “ordinarysparrow’s” (“OS”) ancestors, who can be traced back to William Lawson of Montrose, Scotland, and who was known to many as “The Scottish Rebel,” participated in the bloody Scottish uprising against the British Crown in 1746 and was imprisoned by the British after the battle of Culloden.
A year later Lawson arrived at Port North Potomac, Maryland, as one of 80 prisoners aboard the “Gildart” where he was “bound out” as an indentured (slave) to a Virginia planter
For the rest of OS’ fascinating story, please click here.
At the time, I expressed surprise at how such a large number of contributors and faithful readers and commenters had such recent and not-so-recent immigration backgrounds and experiences.
I should not have been, for – as the series title itself notes — we are a “nation of immigrants.”
Of course, at the end of the 16th century with the exception of Native Americans and those born to the first colonists in the New World, all were immigrants to our shores and became the prelude to a long era of waves of immigration culminating in the 1850-1920 period when the U.S. “experienced a wave of mass migration like never before…”
Three articles published by the fabulous on line publisher Visual Capitalist make the idea that we are a “melting pot” abundantly, and graphically, clear.
The first and most recent article by Visual Capitalist graphically shows that “the United States [continues to be] home to the largest number of immigrants — over 50 million —- which now [2020] make up 15% of the country’s population.” That is a 6% increase since 1990.
The interactive map from Our World in Data highlights immigration by country, as a percentage of the total population, using data from the United Nations (UN) Populations Division. Click on any country on the map (below) to see the growth, or decrease, in immigration.
Another excellent graphic in a December 2018 article depicts the four major “waves” of immigration during the last two centuries: The “Frontier Expansion,” 1830-1880; the “Industrialization,” 1880-1915; the “Great Pause,” 1915-1965 (when quotas on immigrant numbers were enacted and the Great Depression and two World Wars occurred); and the “Post-1965” immigration period. (Below)
Even more striking is a visualization created by professors Pedro M. Cruz and John Wihbey from Northeastern University, illustrating U.S. immigration from 1830 until 2015 as growth rings in a tree trunk. Please watch it HERE.
According to Visual Capitalist, the researchers explain their reasoning behind this captivating metaphor of tree rings (“simulated dendrochronology,”) as follows:
This idea lends itself to the representation of history itself, as it shows a sequence of events that have left a mark and shaped the present. If cells leave a mark in the tree, so can incoming immigrants be seen as natural contributors to the growth of a trunk that is the United States.
Visual Capitalist adds, “It’s no wonder that this animation showing U.S. immigration won Gold for the ‘People, Language, and Identity’ and ‘Most Beautiful’ categories at the 2018 Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards.”
Finally, below is another superb animation by Max Galka, Visual Capitalist, also visualizing two centuries of U.S. Immigration.
Visual Capitalist is one of the fastest growing online publishers globally, focused on topics including markets, technology, energy and the global economy, “making the world’s information more accessible…”
Learn more about Visual Capitalist HERE.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.