Bigger India
Higher Risks, Fewer Protections for America’s Immigrants
By virtue of both income and ethnicity, new Americans have the odds stacked against them when it comes to finding a healthy place to live.
Although the environmental justice movement emerged during one of the greatest waves of immigration in American history, very few people have studied the effects of industrial pollution on immigrants. Between 1965 and 2015, 59 million people moved to the United States; today nearly half of all immigrants land in California, Texas, Florida, or New York. Immigration spiked between 1970 and 2000, and while the number of people arriving each year has declined since then, the total immigrant population has swelled to its largest size ever—around 43.2 million in 2015.