Here, the metaphorical mighty tree is the United States, and if you follow the metaphor to its logical conclusion, it has been made thicker and stronger by the waves of immigrants who have arrived over the decades. Each colored “cell” represents 100 immigrants; over time, the algorithm deposits them in concentric rings, with each ring marking a decade. The older ones encase the core, and newer ones wrap around surface. The colors and the direction of growth represent the origins of the immigrants. The yellow cells depicting immigrants from Latin America, for example, are layered by the computer algorithm towards the bottom of the circle—signaling that they come countries south of the U.S.; those from Asia grow outwards towards the left. (Cruz noted that while the trajectories of Native American and enslaved populations are also of course integral to the story of the country, but this dataset did not include information on these groups.) [...]
For example, the tree trunk swells after the 1965 Immigration Act, which replaced previous policies that intentionally excluded immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. That legislation helped shape the demographics of the country for decades afterward: The cells start getting more colorful, and the rings thicken more towards the west and south. [...]
Perhaps Cruz doesn’t explicitly intend for it, but one effect of this approach is that it makes the viewer see that immigration’s role in the country’s demographics is something natural and organic—a response to various environmental conditions, like the dry and rainy seasons that alternately limit and encourage the growth of a tree. It also reveals that, while immigration is not the only part of the historical process that fed America’s growth, it is essential. The U.S. is a nation of immigrants, right down the very core.
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