Immigration Nation

Representative community:

El Mirage, AZ ( Learn about this community | Read El Mirage, AZ blog )

A vision of America en Español, these 144 counties have large Hispanic populations – more than 36 percent on average. Household incomes in these counties are lower than the average county by about 10 percentage points. About 12 million people reside in Immigration Nation.

These mostly medium to large cities have a higher share of younger residents than does the US on average, as well as a higher percentage of families living in poverty. They tend to be clustered in the South and Southwest. Though Hispanics tend to vote Democratic, these communities as a whole went solidly to President Bush in 2004. But that was before the heated Great Immigration Debate of 2007, in which federal legislation to provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants failed – and any illegal residents in these counties cannot vote.

Immigration Nation and its politics are represented by El Mirage, Ariz., in Patchwork Nation.