Mass Immigration Drastically ‘Reshaping’ the American South

Mass immigration, both illegal and legal, is dramatically “reshaping the American South” more than any other region of the United States, research from the Center for Immigration Studies shows.

The analysis, conducted by Steven Camarota, looks at the expansive growth of the nation’s foreign-born population, which has reached an unprecedented 51.6 million — the largest ever in American history.

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The South has the largest share of the foreign-born population today where 19 million foreign-born residents live, followed by the West with almost 16 million, the Northeast with 10.3 million, and the Midwest with 5.7 million.

Today, the South’s foreign-born population is nearly equivalent to what the foreign-born population was in 1990 when 19.7 million foreign-born residents lived in the U.S. In the last 34 years, the foreign-born population in the South has exploded by 317 percent.

Meanwhile, the foreign-born population in the Midwest has grown 172 percent and 104 percent in the West, as well as 97 percent in the Northeast, Camarota finds:

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In 1990, 5.4 percent of the South’s total population was foreign-born; this was the highest percent ever recorded up to that time for the region. At almost 15 percent today, the share has nearly tripled since 1990, which is unprecedented in southern history. [Emphasis added]

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