A listener’s question prompted our recent examination of refugee
resettlement patterns in Chicago. That inquiry looked at how,
and why, refugees have come to occupy apartments mostly in far
North Side neighborhoods. It also got us wondering: Who were
these refugees, anyhow? Well, we can’t answer that exact
question because nobody keeps precise records of how many
refugees live within Chicago’s city limits. But we found that
there are good data at the statewide level. Once we tumbled down
that rabbit hole, we learned a lot — not just about Illinois’s
shifting refugee population, but also about recent world history
and shifts in American foreign policy. Here’s the data in chart
form. It’s a moving timeline that shows how many refugees
arrived in Illinois each year since 1980. For each year, the
refugees are sorted by country of origin: Refugee arrivals in
Illinois by country of origin (FFY1980-FFY2012) Notes on the
data Early resettlement history The data on the bar chart start
at 1980, when Congress passed The