When researching Mexican immigrants, we stumbled upon many surveys and graphs that presented information that generalized the Hispanic population as a whole. Data in some censuses have homogenized Mexican immigrants with other Hispanic groups to provide information based on people of Hispanic origin as a whole. While immigrants of Hispanic origin are similar in many ways, it is important to note that these groups are very distinct differences in terms of culture, customs and so on. Hispanic immigrants are the largest growing population in the United States. This chart provides an even more specific picture of the growing Mexican population. Even amongst immigrants of Hispanic origin, Mexicans are by far the greatest ethnic group in the United States, outstripping Puerto Ricans, which have also become a popular Hispanic group within the United States.

The next graph shows the immense growth of the Mexican-born population in the United States from the 1970s to the present day. What could have caused this to occur?

Between 1960 and 1970 the population grew an average of 3.4 percent per year.Large-scale settlement in the United States began in the 1970s and continued to increase thereafter. Beginning in the 1970s, significant numbers of Mexican immigrants moved in large numbers to the Midwest U.S., attracted by jobs in the packinghouse industry, and to the southeastern U.S., where they had displaced many African-Americans and contract workers from the Caribbean in agriculture and related industries. This large wave of Mexican immigration were attracted to low-paid labor jobs and an equally high number moved to low-income communities, such as industrial suburbs of Los  Angelos in ethic neighborhoods known as barrios and the agricultural sector of Imperial Valley, California.