This chart comes from the 2013 Transatlantic Trends survey conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Survey respondents were asked to estimate the percentage of the population in their country that was born abroad. The light blue bars reflects these guesses. The dark blue bars, on the other hand, reflect the actual percent of each country’s population that was born abroad, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Perhaps reflecting our nickname as a “nation of immigrants,” Americans mistakenly thought that 42 percent of people in this country had been born abroad. The actual share was less than a third that size, at 13 percent. That put us roughly in line with Great Britain, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, though respondents in none of those other countries overestimated their immigrant population share as much as we did. [...]
In 2015, the Ipsos MORI Perils of Perception survey asked a similar question and found similar results: Nearly everywhere, people overestimated the share of immigrants walking among them. U.S. citizens’ guesstimate for the immigrant share was lower in this survey, though, at “only” 33 percent. [...]
That includes the United States, where respondents said they thought about 17 percent of the country was Muslim, whereas only about 1 percent actually is. The fact that Americans thought a sixth of the country practices Islam is especially striking when you consider that about half of Americans say they do not personally know a single Muslim person.
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