By Mike Schneider—
The Associated Press
A county full of citrus groves between two of the most populated metropolitan areas in Florida received the most new residents last year in the United States, according to estimates published this Thursday by the United States Census Bureau.
More than 29,300 people settled last year in the county between Tampa and Orlando, two urban areas where housing prices have grown progressively, so it is considered a more affordable alternative.
Thus, Polk
County
begins to have fewer orange groves next to Interstate 4 and more residential areas for local service workers, as well as distribution warehouses for delivery services to residents of the two metropolitan areas.
Almost all of the growth in Polk County — 88% — was from people moving from another area of the United States, rather than abroad, according to 2023 population estimates.
“The growth of residential areas has been increasing and occurs in a way that is not always noticeable.
But when you're stuck in traffic, then you pay attention to what's going on,” Matt Joyner, whose family has lived in Polk for seven generations, said of the influx of new residents.
Only four other counties — Harris and Montgomery, in the Houston metropolitan area;
Collin, in the Dallas metropolitan area, and Maricopa, where Phoenix is located, gained more population, thanks to their higher numbers of natural growth, that is, births that exceed deaths.
Harris, where Houston is located, grew by nearly 54,000 people, more than any other county last year.
Almost two-thirds of that increase was due to births that exceeded deaths.
That natural growth of almost 34,700 people was the highest in the country.
Despite receiving new residents from abroad as births exceeded deaths, some of the country's most populous counties were also among those that lost the most residents as they moved to other parts of the country last year, a trend that accelerated as beginning of the decade with the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Do you pay a lot for your mortgage? That can be a good thing when filing your taxes.]
The most marked effect was in Los Angeles County, with 56,000 fewer inhabitants.
It was followed by three counties representing the New York City neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, which lost 28,300, 26,300 and 25,300 people, respectively.
However, the declines in those large counties were considerably smaller last year than in 2022.
New York officials, however, believe that the Census Bureau's estimates do not take into account the arrival of tens of thousands of asylum seekers last year.
The city rented entire hotels to house migrants and put cots in schools, in addition to setting up temporary accommodation in tents, a cruise terminal and the building of a former police academy.
Up to 50,000 people were left unaccounted for in city shelters, according to city officials, who plan to challenge census estimates.
“We wanted to alert you,” said Casey Berkovitz, press secretary for the New York City Planning Department.
“Once this underestimation is taken into account (...) the year marked a return to pre-pandemic levels.”
In the most popular destinations for immigrants—counties in southern Florida and those corresponding to Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Jose—international immigration grew by double digits from one year to the next.
The estimates do not distinguish whether people have entered the country legally or illegally, so it is impossible to know whether part of the growth is due to illicit border crossings.
Arrests for illegal crossings broke a record in December but fell by half in January.
In Miami-Dade County there were almost 54,500 new residents from outside the United States, the highest number in the country last year and an increase of almost 40% compared to 2022. International immigration compensated for the departure of more than 47,000 residents who left from that to other counties in the United States.
As for metropolitan areas, which combine counties with social and economic connections, Dallas had the greatest growth last year — more than 152,000 residents — and surpassed 8 million people for the first time.
That growth was followed by the Houston metropolitan area, with almost 140,000 additional residents, and Atlanta, which gained more than 68,000 people.
[Lots of security and Trump supporters around the Florida courthouse where he is located]
The Atlanta metropolitan area moved up two places on the list to become the sixth most populous in the country with 6.3 million inhabitants.
Only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Houston surpassed it.
Polk County, which has more than 25,090 hectares (62,000 acres) of citrus groves, is one of the leading producers of oranges in Florida.
In recent years, the state's citrus industry has suffered from the rapid expansion of a bacteria that affected the health of the trees and constant growth in metropolitan areas.
However, the county has held on to its citrus tradition.
Most of the urban development has been concentrated in the northeast of the county, just a few miles from Walt Disney World in the Orlando metropolitan area.
But many of the citrus growers in that area who sold their land to real estate developers have simply moved to the southern part of the county, where plantations continue to abound, said Joyner, general director of Florida Citrus Mutual, a farmers' association. .
Right now, Polk's new neighbors have a picturesque setting as they drive past the county's plantations: white flowers on the trees and a sweet scent in the air.
“Right now wherever you go, the plantations are white as snow and the smell is sweet,” Joyner said.
“Remember the old days.”