Tennessee has had a big influx of people coming in from Florida, according to numbers a Florida newspaper editor gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to Bill Thompson, editorial page editor of the Lakeland, Fla.-based The Ledger, Tennessee is one of five states that “welcomed more newcomers than wished farewell to pilgrims.”
As for the five other states, Texas took in people mostly from California. Alabama took in people from Georgia. Kentucky took in people from Ohio. And Oklahoma took in people from Texas, Thompson wrote.
Thompson said he decided to gather this information after seeing so many out-of-state license plates and moving vans coming into Florida. He said he wondered why, for instance, someone he saw from California, which has great weather and is supposedly “a quasi-socialist paradise,” would want to relocate to his state.
“In recent weeks President Trump has focused attention on the risk of the immigrant caravans coming from the south,” Thompson wrote.
“But perhaps we in the South need to be mindful of caravans fleeing Bluetopia’s high taxes, excessive government intrusion, rising cost of living and social-justice warrioring. Let’s hope they, like immigrants of yore, seek assimilation rather than proselytization.”
In 2017, Thompson said, citing government numbers, roughly 566,000 people moved to Florida from another state. New York is the leading feeder state. Georgia, California, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia followed.
“This sparked another thought about our country’s internal movement,” Thompson wrote.
“Considering the top five states where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump posted their largest margins of victory, in terms of total votes, a pattern emerges.”
In 2016 Hillary Clinton won California, New York, Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Each of those states “saw more departures than new arrivals,” Thompson said.
“So the next questions: Where did people in the Clinton states go? And from whence did those in the Trump states come?” Thompson asked.
Census data, he said, indicates the largest group in each exodus among pro-Hillary states was as follows: from California to Texas; Illinois to Indiana; New York to Florida; Massachusetts to New Hampshire; and Maryland to Virginia.”
“People in Trump country moving to red states seems rational. But the migrants opting to leave Hillaryland for potential enemy territory are more intriguing,” Thompson wrote.
“Take that Californian I passed on the highway. Who was he? A disaffected conservative who saw no hope or purpose in remaining in a bastion of uber-liberalism and seeking a friendlier climate? Or was he a surreptitious interloper still clinging to the ways of his homeland and hoping that one day they could be implemented in his adopted home?
As a Floridian, and in the bigger sense, a Sunbelter, I worry it might be the latter.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
I’m a disaffected Constitutional Conservative who’s vote never counted in New York, so I moved to Tennessee, a free State, and never looked back.