A fascinating story from Financial Times on the political heritage of the South, and the challenges it poses for both parties ...

On the road to Thom and Janice Stoudemire’s house, gravel crunches beneath our car tyres, indicating that we have reached the end of the state-maintained road. Up ahead, the Stoudemires’ brick, ranch-style home is almost invisible behind the pine trees and azaleas. The house is not one of the planned subdivisions of suburban America, but part of a collection of five or six homes surrounded by fields, hills and ponds. Inside, Thom and Janice greet us with warm cookies and ice-water and call for their children, Ryan and Jessica. The house is immaculate, every surface ­covered in ­Americana. In the bathroom are boxes of Victorian soap and “hair powder”; in the living room a metal sign on the wall reads ­“Spitting on Sidewalks Prohibited”.

Thom is wearing a dark grey polo shirt, which he’s tucked into his jeans. When he says the south has been ­“significantly watered down in my generation”, he is talking about immigration. He works in construction, where immigrant labour is in high demand. “It is a bitter pill, one we have to deal with on an everyday basis. You walk around, and just about everyone is Hispanic and, let’s face it, most of them are here illegally.” The statistics say that South Carolina, like the other states we visited, has a relatively low level of immigration compared with the rest of the country – 3 per cent against the national average of 12.6 per cent. Still, for a small community that is literally black and white, the influx of 10 new faces can feel more like 100. Thom laughs at official immigration statistics and offers up a figure more than double in size.

Really a good read.