The New South

In Georgia, Immigrants Unsettle Old Sense of Place By RACHEL L. SWARNS PEARSON, Ga. For generations, people here have savored the predictable cadences of small-town living. They knew their neighbors and their neighborsneighbors, the sweet sound of Sunday church mornings and the rumble of tractors tilling the rich soil. And they knew that most outsiders would drive right through this blue-collar community of tidy bungalows and mobile homes, without stopping or settling, on their way to bigger, busier places. Then Mexican immigrants started streaming in. Lured in the 1990s by abundant agricultural work and new manufacturing jobs, the newcomers landed in a town with one traffic light, no tortillas in the supermarket and residents who stared openly at foreigners in a county that saw its last wave of immigrants in the 1850s. Today, hundreds of Mexican immigrants, both illegal and legal, work in factories, fields and stores; study in public schools; and live in neighborhoods that were once mostly white or black. This year, as many longtime residents anguished over the metamorphosis of their town, Serafico Jaimes opened a Spanish-language video store right off Main Street and proudly hung a Mexican flag alongside his American flag in the storefront window. This is our town now, too,Mr. Jaimes said. His town sits in Atkinson County, Ga., population 8,030 and a cauldron of demographic change. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mostly from Mexico, have poured into the South, bypassing traditional settlement states like New York, California and Florida in favor of far-flung towns with thriving industries. The surge of newcomers has helped drive the fierce debate in Congress over immigration as well as the budding activism that burst into view this spring when millions of people took to the streets to demand rights for immigrants. The simmering tensions between Americans and new arrivals have played out here, too, far from the national spotlight. A visit to Atkinson County offers an intimate glimpse at how immigration is rapidly transforming day-to-day life in some small Southern towns.

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KJ