Michael Barone posted an article at Townhall.com today explaining how the current economic recession is affecting population trends in America. One example cited is the migration to California which began during World War II and ended during the 1980’s. Since 1990, Americans have been leaving California. The only thing that has kept the state’s population growing at the national average has been Mexican and Asian immigration.

Mr. Barone reports in the article:

My prediction is that we won’t ever again see the heavy Latin immigration we saw between 1983 and 2007, which averaged 300,000 legal immigrants and perhaps as many illegals annually.

Mexican and other Latin birthrates fell more than two decades ago. And Mexico, source of 60 percent of Latin immigrants, is now a majority-middle-class country.

Asian immigration may continue, primarily from China and India, especially if we have the good sense to change our laws to let in more high-skill immigrants.

But the next big immigration source, I think, will be sub-Saharan Africa. We may end up with prominent politicians who actually were born in Kenya.

The state that is currently growing is Texas. One in twelve Americans now live in Texas. Texas has taken steps to attract businesses and people–it has enacted tax and tort policies to make the state business friendly. If the state governments are the laboratories for the federal government, we can learn a lot from Texas.