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    Amid A Hispanic Boom, Conflicting Feelings On Immigration

    In southwest Virginia, Galax was once a traditional small-town mountain community. It now has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the state.
    by Melissa Block Jul 17, 2018 7 minutes
    Michael Stevens, senior executive vice president of Vaughan Furniture Company, sits at his desk in Galax, Va. Following the decline of the furniture production industry in Galax, the Vaughan Furniture Company was forced to largely shut down. Now Stevens oversees the leasing of their facilities and office spaces to other companies as they try to sell their large properties in town.

    Immigration is near the top of the list of issues Americans find "the most worrying," according to a new poll conducted for NPR by the research firm Ipsos.

    But Americans' views on immigration diverge sharply depending on party affiliation, where in the country we live, and whether we know people who were born outside the United States.

    To explore some of the poll's findings, we went to the small town of Galax, in rural southwestern Virginia, which has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the state. There, we found a community that holds many of the complicated — often conflicting — views on immigration that the nation does.

    About 7,000 people live in Galax, set in the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains, close by the North Carolina border.

    "When I was growing up, Galax was very white; a very traditional small-town mountain community," says Elizabeth Stringer, 40, who teaches English as a Second Language at the high school.

    Over the past 18 years, she's seen her student caseload balloon. In the Galax schools now, almost a third of the students are Hispanic.

    Most of Stringer's students came from Mexico, but

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