Chart of the Day: Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States

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Matt Yglesias linked today to a map from the Pew Hispanic Center showing which states had the highest populations of unauthorized immigrants. It was interesting but unsurprising: the biggest states (California, Texas, Florida, New York) also have the most unauthorized immigrants. This got me curious about which states had the highest percentages of unauthorized immigrants—which the Pew map also provides. The answer is in the chart below.

For what it’s worth, I thought the most striking thing was the fact that for all the sound and fury illegal immigration provokes, it turns out that there are only seven states in which unauthorized immigrants make up more than 4 percent of the population. In the vast majority of the country, they’re a vanishingly small group.