Arizona Is Immigration ‘Test Case’ Zero With Hispanic Gains

Jay Stewart carries a handgun to protect his family from smugglers who move illegal drugs and people through the desert near his home south of Phoenix. Miguel Espinoza crossed the border 17 years ago to escape a Mexican territory where drug lords rule.

The men, a 46-year-old airline pilot with two children and a 32-year-old landscaper with four, are in different ways part of the Arizona’s future. The makeup of the state, a flash point in the U.S. debate over immigration, changed so much in the last decade that if birth rates and other factors hold steady, Arizona will be majority Hispanic in a generation, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington.