DeKalb's Immigrant Population: 153 Percent Increase 1990-2014

DeKalb County's adult immigration population has increased 153 percent from 1990 to 2014.

That's according to new analysis from the Center For Immigration Studies, a conservative nonprofit that advocates against high levels of immigration.

According to the group's survey, DeKalb's population of immigrants increased from 7.7 percent in 1990 to 19.5 percent in 2014, to a total population of 707,185.

The group's survey focuses only on adults and considers immigrants living in the community both legally and illegally.

"The analysis focuses on adults because they have the most immediate impact," the report reads. "Adults directly affect the job market as workers, they impact politics as constituents and potential voters, and they begin to reshape the culture in receiving communities as soon as they arrive."

In Stewart County, in west Georgia south of Columbus, the immigrant population grew from less than one percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2014, according to the survey. And in Echols County, in far south Georgia near Valdosta, the population went from 2 percent to 21 percent over the same time period.

Immigration-policy spin aside, the CIS survey shines a light on a trend that analysts say has the potential to shift the state's cultural and political landscape.

Already, political experts are citing the increase in Georgia's Hispanic population as one of the reasons polls have shown Democrat Hillary Clinton with a narrow lead over Republican Donald Trump in Georgia -- a state that hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992.

The CIS survey analyzes data from the 1990 and 2000 Census and the 2010-2014 five-year file of the American Community Survey.

Among its other findings, the survey says that in 1990, immigrants were at least 20 percent of the adult population in 44 U.S. counties. By 2014, they were 20 percent in 152 counties.

Patch Staff Writer Doug Gross contributed to this report.

Map courtesy Center for Immigration Studies