How Immigration Built Today's Progressive Caucus
Roughly 25 million immigrants have naturalized since the 1990 Immigration Act. Their concentration in 20 metropolitan areas resulted in the elections of Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and many of the Progressive Caucus bench.
Higher-immigrant-share districts elect more liberal members. Sorted by the foreign-born share of the district, the pattern is consistent across the bench: low Heritage Action scores (higher = more conservative) and negative DW-NOMINATE first-dimension scores (more negative = more liberal).
| Member | Origin | Foreign-born share | District | Heritage Action Score | DW-NOMINATE Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grace Meng | US-born, Taiwanese | ~48% | NY-6 (Queens) | 16% | −0.371 |
| Jimmy Gomez | US-born, Mexican | ~42% | CA-34 (East / NE Los Angeles) | 16% | −0.529 |
| Ro Khanna | US-born, Indian | ~39% | CA-17 (Silicon Valley) | 26% | −0.458 |
| Sylvia Garcia | US-born, Mexican | ~35% | TX-29 (Houston) | 16% | −0.767 |
| Adriano Espaillat | Dominican Republic (Santiago) | ~34% | NY-13 (Upper Manhattan / Bronx) | 16% | −0.527 |
| Jesús "Chuy" García | Mexico (Durango) | ~33% | IL-4 (Chicago) | 28% | −0.438 |
| Nydia Velázquez | Puerto Rico (Yabucoa) | ~32% | NY-7 (Brooklyn) | 23% | −0.547 |
| Judy Chu | US-born, Chinese | ~31% | CA-28 (Pasadena / SGV) | 23% | −0.479 |
| Suhas Subramanyam | US-born, Indian | ~30% | VA-10 (NoVa) | 8% * | −0.238 |
| Ted Lieu | Taiwan (Taipei) | ~29% | CA-36 (West LA) | 5% | −0.369 |
| Raja Krishnamoorthi | India (New Delhi) | ~28% | IL-8 (NW suburban Chicago) | 6% | −0.350 |
| Pramila Jayapal | India (Chennai) | ~25% | WA-7 (Seattle) | 26% | −0.609 |
| Mark Takano | US-born, Japanese | ~22% | CA-39 (Riverside) | 21% | −0.457 |
| Ami Bera | US-born, Indian | ~21% | CA-6 (Sacramento) | 5% | −0.246 |
| Ilhan Omar | Somalia (Mogadishu) | ~16% | MN-5 (Minneapolis) | 21% | −0.296 |
| Rashida Tlaib | US-born, Palestinian | ~15% | MI-12 (Detroit / Dearborn) | 28% | −0.290 |
| Shri Thanedar | India (Belgaum) | ~12% | MI-13 (Detroit) | 11% | −0.352 |
* Subramanyam was first seated in the 119th Congress; his figure is the in-progress 119th Heritage Action score, as no 118th score exists.
What these scores measure. The Heritage Action Score comes from the Heritage Action for America legislative scorecard, which rates how often a member votes in line with the conservative positions the group tracks, on a 0–100% scale — a higher percentage means more conservative voting. DW-NOMINATE is a political-science measure (the Poole–Rosenthal method) that places every member of Congress on a left–right scale, roughly −1 (most liberal) to +1 (most conservative), derived from their entire roll-call voting record; the first dimension captures the main liberal–conservative axis. Both metrics point the same way here: low Heritage scores and negative DW-NOMINATE scores indicate consistently liberal voting.
Sources: Heritage Action Scorecard, 118th Congress (higher % = more conservative); DW-NOMINATE first-dimension scores, 119th Congress, voteview.com (more negative = more liberal); U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2019–2023 5-Year Estimates (district foreign-born share).