Most Common Country of Origin of Immigrants in the United States - Note for a discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

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According to the Department of Homeland Security, 1,031,631 people became Legal Permanent Residents (green card holders) of the United States in 2012. Many of them (146,406) come from Mexico, the most common country of origin of permanent immigrants in most of the U.S. states. But what happens if you don't take take Mexico into account? The infographic below represents each of the 50 states as the flag of the country the most of its immigrants come from (excluding Mexico).

Is this what you were expecting? As you can see, the most popular countries are India (19 states), the Philippines (7 states) and Burma/Myanmar (5 states).

So, now, you may be wondering why I decided to take Mexico out of the picture. The infographic below will give you the answers: it shows the most common country of origin of Legal Permanent Immigrants in each U.S. state (including Mexico). 

As you can see, Mexico is by far the most popular country (27 states), followed by India (7 states).

If you focus on the countries you would have never guessed, it's not that hard to understand why they are there: most of them (Burma, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iraq and Somalia) are the countries of origin of political refugees who were granted asylum.

P.S.: Thanks to Ben Blatt for the inspiration.