Increase of the Foreign-Born Population in the American South Far Outpaces Other Regions
By Steven A. Camarota on June 28, 2024
The foreign-born population, which includes legal and illegal immigrants captured in Census Bureau data, has grown dramatically in the United States in the last three decades. Nowhere is this truer than in the American South. The dramatic increase in the South in recent decades is particularly striking because historically the region was largely bypassed during all other prior periods of mass immigration in the 18th and early 20th centuries. But since 1990 the foreign-born population in the South has grown more than twice as fast as it has in the rest of the country. Immigration policy is reshaping the American South more than any other part of the country.1
In 2024, the total foreign-born population in the South was 19 million, by far the largest total in any of the nation’s four regions. The region’s foreign-born population almost equals the entire foreign-born population in the United States in 1990 of 19.7 million (Figure 1).2
Since 1990, the foreign-born population in the South has increased by 317 percent, compared to 172 percent in the Midwest, 104 percent in the West, and 97 percent in the Northeast (Figure 2).
Just since 2010, the foreign-born population in the South has increased by 49 percent, compared to 29 percent in the Midwest, 19 percent in the Northeast, and 13 percent in the West.
https://cis.org/Camarota/Increase-ForeignBorn-Population-American-South-Far-Outpaces-Other-Regions
