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Profile of Alabama

Profile of Alabama

Region Southeast Entered union 1819 Largest cities Birmingham, Montgomery (capital), Mobile, Huntsville Modern immigrant communities Mexican, Asian Indians Population Total Percent of state Percent of U.S. U.S. Rank All state residents 4,833,722 100.0 1.53 23 All foreign-residents 162,226 3.4 0.39 33

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract for 2013.

Notes: The U.S. Population in 2013 was 316,128,839 of whom 41,348,066 (13.1%) were foreign born. Rankings in last column reflect total numbers, not percentages.


Issues in U.S. Immigration

Alabama

by Rosemary M. Canfield Reisman

Significance Patterns of immigration in Alabama have varied markedly among different areas of the state, making the state as a whole ethnically diverse; however, arrivals of large groups of new immigrants sometimes prompted eruptions of nativism. Late in the twentieth century, an influx of Mexicans provoked protests from taxpayers and from workers who felt settlement was taken over by the Spanish. In 1813 it was claimed by the United States. Nevertheless, the French and the Spanish had left their imprint on Mobile, and as a port city, it would continue to have a more cosmopolitan atmosphere than any other place in Alabama. Baldwin County, which lies on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, also attracted a diverse population.

After the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865, immigrants from Italy, Scandinavia, Greece, Germany, central Europe, and French Canada settled in the county, cleared the land and farmed the fertile soil, and fished in the coastal waters. The ethnic origins of the communities they founded are still evident. For example, Fairhope, a town in Baldwin County, was the site of two unusual ventures, both organized by midwesterners. It was originally founded as a semisocialistic single-tax colony, and it was also the home of an early educational experiment, the School of Organic Education.

Alabama's central and northern parts were settled largely by people from other states. Planters from South Carolina and Georgia, who could no longer grow cotton on their depleted soil, moved to the Black Belt in the central part of Alabama, and Scotch-Irish from the eastern Appalachians traveled westward into northern Alabama. From time to time, new European arrivals attempted to carve out places for themselves. For example, in 1817, two years after the final fall of France's Emperor Napoleon, some of his officers and officeholders went to western Alabama to establish vineyards and grow olive trees. Their enterprise was a failure, and they left, but the town they named Demopolis remains. During the 1890's, immigrants from Sweden, Denmark, and Nor way were persuaded to move to Fruithurst, a model town in eastern Alabama, but their winemaking project, too, was a failure. German immigrants who founded Cullman in 1848 had no better luck with viniculture, but they remained and succeeded at other enterprises.

During the 1880's, Birmingham became the center of a new industr y, the making of coke pig iron. To the local labor force the manufacturers added immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, and Holland. Because these immigrants made up less than one-fifth of the local workforce, there was no concerted protest to their presence. After World War I, however, when immigrants flooded in from southern and eastern Europe, local workers saw their jobs threatened. Moreover, longtime residents, who were mostly of Protestant Scotch-Irish stock, looked with suspicion on the languages, customs, and religions of the new arrivals, many of whom were Roman Catholics or Jews. The result was a storm of protest and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.

Native Alabamians welcomed well-educated immigrants who could fill obvious needs, such as the German scientists who transformed Huntsville into a technological center, and Indian physicians who came to Alabama to work in understaffed hospitals. However, they resented the presence of uneducated immigrants who began flooding into the state from Latin America, and especially from Mexico, during the 1990's. They believed these people took jobs away from native Alabamians and burdened taxpayers with their demands for schooling, health care, and social ser vices.

The fact that as many as half these immigrants had probably entered the United States illegally and that some were involved in drug trafficking also concerned Alabamians. Some Alabamians supported taking legal steps to expel undocument immigrants. However, others made efforts to teach English to Spanish-speaking immigrants and help them in other ways to become integral members of the community.

In 2011, the Alabama legislature passed HB 56, a strict anti-illegal immigrant law including provisions making it a crime to give a ride to an undocumented immigrant, requiring to schools to check the immigration status of students, banning landlords from renting to undocumented immigrants, and requiring police to arrest individuals suspected of being undocumented immigrants. The law had unintended consequences including the arrest and detention of a Mercedes-Benz executive, and the creation of delays for citizens as well as non-citizens in activities like renewing automobile registration, due to the extra paperwork required to confirm each individual's status. However, the state was blocked by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from enforcing key provisions of the law, and in 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal, so that the state is essentially barred from enforcing it.

Further Reading

1 

Cobb, James C., and William Stueck, eds. Globalization and the American South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

2 

Hamilton, Virginia. Alabama: A Bicentennial History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.

3 

Marrow, Helen B. New Destination Dreaming: Immigration, Race, and Legal Status in the Rural American South. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

4 

Mohl, Raymond A. “Globalization, Latinization, and the Nuevo New South.” In Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the U.S. South, Reconstruction to Present, edited by Pippa Holloway. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008.

5 

Odem, Mary E., and Elaine Lacy, eds. Latino Immigrants and the Transformation of the U.S. South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009.

6 

Rogers, William Warren, Robert David Ward, Leah Rawls Atkins, and Wayne Flynt. Alabama: The Histor y of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994.

7 

Waters, Mary C., and Reed Ueda, eds. The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration Since 1965. Cambridge, Mass.: Har vard University Press, 2007.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Canfield Reisman, Rosemary M. "Alabama." Issues in U.S. Immigration, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=IUSI_0220.
APA 7th
Canfield Reisman, R. M. (2015). Alabama. In C. Bankston III (Ed.), Issues in U.S. Immigration. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Canfield Reisman, Rosemary M. "Alabama." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Issues in U.S. Immigration. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.