ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the census,

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a long list of every mistake you've ever made.

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Yeah, like that. There.

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Okay, and the map.

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What had the biggest impact on the population figures

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represented in the map right here?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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Okay, well what exactly are we looking for here?

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According to the key, - no, this kind of key right here -

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the darker colors on the map correspond to a higher percentage of

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foreign-born population. So let's see what made these

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particular places hot to trot for globetrotters.

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Could the population figures represented in the map have

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been impacted by the A - loosening of immigration restrictions?

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Hmm. Well, there wasn't any substantial

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change to immigration policy during the 1990s,

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so there must have been a different reason for these worldly arrivals.

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Were these population figures a result of B -

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unemployment in the Midwest and Great Plains?

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Well, unemployment in those regions could have forced people

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to flee to the coast, but there wasn't a rising

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tide of interstate migration among immigrants at this time.

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So that puts B and C out to sea. [ chuckles ]

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Which means these population figures were primarily caused

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by D - a rise in immigration from Latin America and Asia.

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See how those blue boxes are concentrated along California

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and the Southwest border? Well, that suggests immigrants

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born in Asia and Latin America chose areas of the U.S.

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closest to their home countries. So D is the right answer.

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For much of the foreign-born population, the West coast

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was all clear for starting a new life in the United States.

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