Problem in generating a variable

[Paris Rira]

Dear Profs and colleagues,
I am, going to compute the total number of immigrants based on nacio which shows the nationality of individuals. Since the nacio is a string variable I made a variable immigrant which has a value 1 (immigrants).

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input float immigrant str6 nacio
1 "ES"
1 "RO"
1 "UA"
1 "CV"
1 "GW"
1 "UA"
1 "CV"
1 "FR"
1 "BR"
1 "GW"
1 "BR"
1 "BG"
1 "AO"
1 "CV"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "RO"
1 "GN"
1 "CV"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "BR"
1 "GE"
1 "CV"
1 "UA"
1 "BR"
1 "UA"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
1 "GN"
1 "UA"
1 "CV"
1 "MD"
1 "CV"
1 "GW"
1 "GW"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "DE"
1 "BR"
1 "AP"
1 "MD"
1 "RO"
1 "MD"
1 "CV"
1 "RO"
1 "RO"
1 "ST"
1 "CN"
1 "BR"
1 "RU"
1 "GW"
1 "CV"
1 "CV"
1 "BR"
1 "UA"
1 "AO"
1 "IN"
1 "UA"
1 "MD"
1 "MD"
1 "BR"
1 "ST"
1 "BR"
1 "MD"
1 "RO"
1 "BR"
1 "GN"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
1 "UA"
1 "UA"
1 "RO"
1 "BE"
1 "UA"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "RO"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "FR"
1 "BR"
1 "UA"
1 "BR"
1 "AO"
1 "UA"
1 "CV"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "RO"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
1 "CV"
1 "GW"
1 "BR"
1 "UA"
1 "BR"
1 "BR"
end

I did this syntax but something is wrong. Because the total number of immigrants is 145,165 while
num_immi generates very large values, larger than total number of immigrants.

egen num_immi = total(immigrant), by(nacio )

. tab immigrant

  immigrant |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          1 |    145,165      100.00      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |    145,165      100.00

. sum num_immi

    Variable |        Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
    num_immi |    145,165    17948.51    16001.13          1      41610
end

Any ideas are appreciated. I really have no idea whats wrong here.

Cheers,
Paris

[Nick Cox]

Check whether you have more than one variable whose name starts with nacio.

ds nacio*

[Paris Rira]

Thank you so much Prof Cox. Always trivial stuff creates huge problems in STATA.