Just as President Obama and Congress are moving to solve the nation's immigration problem, the shape of the problem is changing.
Across the Midwest, companies -- mostly agriculture-related -- are hiring many fewer Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants. The reason: half or more of these immigrants were undocumented, and employers were both tired of verifying documents and afraid of the penalties if they slipped. Some highly-publicized raids by federal immigration agents reinforced their fears, as did a new policy of "silent raids" targeting employers themselves.
These Hispanics are increasingly being replaced in packinghouses and on farms by a spectrum of immigrants -- apparently legal -- from other countries. These include immigrants under national quotas, refugees, and winners of the government's visa lotteries. They come from around the world, mostly Africa and Asia, and include Pacific islanders, Congolese, Sudanese, Somalis, Vietnamese, Burmese, Ukrainian Pentecostals and others.
Evidence for this is mostly anecdotal, gleaned from visits and calls to Midwestern towns that once were on their way to being majority Hispanic: I'll fill in some of these details later. So far as I know, there's been little media attention to this shift. At the moment, it's a big story waiting to be reported.