ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by immigration patterns,

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the design of every handmaid ancestral quilt.

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Yeah. All right, here's the excerpt.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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... by Congress and Men in Black.

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Okay, and the question:

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In the 1990s and 2000s,

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immigration patterns largely tended to be... what?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right. Moving to another country is a pretty big deal.

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There's a new language, new culture, new reality shows.

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Well, maybe not so much the last one.

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Let's see which answer best captures the kind of transition

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made by immigrants to the U.S. in the last few decades.

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In the 1990s and 2000s, were immigration patterns

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A - located primarily in the American South?

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Well, the South might be the center of American hospitality,

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but the region sees relatively few immigrants

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compared to the rest of the country.

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Same goes for the Midwest. And that knocks out A and D.

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Were immigration patterns at this time B -

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evenly distributed across the country?

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Well, no, quite the opposite, actually.

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If you move to a new country, you'd probably wanna see some

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familiar faces and speak your old language, right?

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So you're probably gonna settle wherever you

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can get that authentic curry biryani or, uh,

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chorizo empanada... Anyway,

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it means that in the 1990s and 2000s,

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immigration patterns largely tended to be

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C - clustered in a few states.

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In general, immigrants tend to settle among their countrymen and women,

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which is why many cities include neighborhoods like

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Chinatown or Little Italy.

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Makes sense, right? As a result,

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places that experience high levels of immigration, like California and New York,

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often continue to receive immigrants.

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So C is the correct answer.

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And you know, if Americans decide to move abroad, well,

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maybe that means they've got Little Americas in countries all over the world, too.

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Yeah, like that. [ chuckles ]

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