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.
“Immigration policy is reshaping the American South more than any other part of the country,” Camarota writes.
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.
Chart via Center for Immigration Studies
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:
By 2024, the South accounted for 37.3 percent of the total foreign-born population in the United States, compared to 23.2 percent in 1990 or 31.9 percent as recently as 2010. [Emphasis added]
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]
Chart via Center for Immigration Studies
Some southern states have been more impacted than others by mass immigration.
For example, in 1990, Texas and Florida were the only two southern states that had more than half a million foreign-born residents. Today, six southern states had foreign-born populations that exceed a million: Texas, Florida, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.
At the same time, Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia have seen little growth in their foreign-born populations. In each state, the foreign-born population represents less than five percent of the total population.
The findings are significant as they could help shift the nation’s electorate.
Annually, the U.S. admits more than a million foreign nationals on green cards — about 7-in-10 of whom arrive through the process known as “chain migration,” whereby newly naturalized citizens can sponsor an unlimited number of foreign relatives for green cards.
In addition, another million foreign nationals are admitted on temporary work visas every year. On top of this historically high level of legal immigration, potentially millions of illegal aliens arrive in the U.S. every few years in the hopes of resettling permanently without being deported.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
