Census data is collected every 10 years, and has usually included information on place of foreign birth, ancestry or both. This is the most comprehensive source for identifying the number of people from a country or region of the world living in the United States at a specific time. Data is available for the country as a whole, as well as for smaller places such as states, counties and cities.
Federal government agencies currently post more information and publications on their websites than they publish in print. Use Search USA.gov instead of Google to cut down on non-government results. This search engine includes .gov, .mil, .us and other official government domains for federal, state and local government in the United States. Many departments and agencies also post digitized historical documents on their websites.
Known as the Dillingham Commission, the U.S. Immigration Commission was a joint House-Senate Commission that produced a series of reports on immigration and immigrants between 1907 and 1911. The forty-one volume series includes a wealth of information on immigrant communities, statistics on immigration, immigrant workers in specific industries, children of immigrants in schools and immigration legislation. The Commission was created by anti-immigration forces in Congress and that is reflected in some volumes of the report, such as the "Dictionary of Races and Peoples" and in the recommendations to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe.
