Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Southern folks settle in S.C.

If anyone had asked me a week ago where most new South Carolinians come from, I might have said Ohio or New York or even Connecticut. I'd say that because a lot of people I meet on golf courses seem to be from those states.

Well, I would be wrong.

The S.C. Office of Research and Statistics, which keeps track of such things, says the largest number of new people since 1990 have come from North Carolina (393,935), Georgia (241,053) and Florida (217,644).

Personally, having lived in North Carolina, I'm not sure why anyone would migrate from there to here. Officials say it may partly be the result of the ever-expanding Charlotte metropolitan area south toward Rock Hill.

Meanwhile, they say the influx of Floridians could be due to what they call the "half-back phenomenon" - northern retirees who moved to Florida then wanted to get closer to home and settled on South Carolina.

I know the feeling, on a smaller scale. When I retired, my bride and I planned to move to Beaufort until we realized we didn't want to be so far away from our Grand Strand family and friends. So we settled about halfway back, in McClellanville. So it goes.

I'm not sure what inspires Georgians to come. I'd like to blame the traffic around Atlanta's interstates, but more likely people just want to live on the coast and South Carolina has less expensive beach communities than Georgia.

We get our share of northerners, too.

New York has sent us 145,086. I'm guessing they are Upstate New Yorkers. I can't believe many would leave Manhattan for the quiet of South Carolina.

Ohio and Pennsylvania send 84,898 and 84,558 people south, respectively. Experts say many northerners move to the coastal areas, which could account for my own perception that so many golfers are from, you know, up there.

The Republicans of South Carolina will be happy to know that my own home state, Minnesota, does not even register on the migration map. They can rest easy that there will never be an Al Franken or a Jesse Ventura.

On the other hand, 106,866 foreigners have decided to make South Carolina their home. I wonder: Shouldn't someone alert Lou Dobbs?