In Georgia, Immigrants Unsettle Old Sense of Place

“For generations, people here have savored the predictable cadences of small-town living. They knew their neighbors and their neighbors neighbors, 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. “

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