Mid-Decade Report: Immigration SpreadingNew Census Bureau figures confirm what many Americans can already see with their own eyes: The numbers of their foreign-born neighbors are growing. And the change is most dramatic in states not known for having large numbers of immigrants.
Driven by immigration from Mexico, the trend partly explains why Latinos accounted for half of America's growth over the past five years.
Virtually every state in the nation saw a rise in its Latino population from 200 to 2005, according to the new mid-decade Census Bureau report known as the American Community Survey. In states like Georgia, Tennessee, Nevada and South Carolina, the Hispanic population jumped more than 40 percent in the period -- and Arkansas has seen an almost 50 percent increase.Nationally, West Virginia was the only state in the period studied that did not show a rise in minority population.
Demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution says the new census figures reveal what he calls "a dispersal of diversity" throughout the country. It's part of a trend that dates back 15 years, to when economic recession made states such as California, Texas, New York, and Florida less attractive.

Prospects for the Future
The immigration tidal wave of the last three decades has made it impossible for Baby Boomers to ever enjoy the 1970s dream of a stabilized country — even if all immigration were stopped tomorrow. The Census Bureau states that if immigration were reduced to replacement level, the United States population would still be growing at the end of the century because of the momentum created by the last three decades of immigration.



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