To each his or her own. Would you folks in NC or OK mind taking some of our poor folk? Even the illegals don't want to live around here due to high rent/slumlords.
We lived in south-central Tennessee for a year, when my husband was in grad school, and we had to go to Nashville to make copies! That was flippin’ primitive! And the “Mexican” food? Egad! I’d have invited the landscape-farm workers over to cook, before I’d eat at a “Mexican” restaurant!
Poor people can live pretty well in Oklahoma and North Carolina, if they work. The illegal problem is everywhere, but it’s the fault of the state/county/city government, giving the illegals handouts. You can rent an adequate (older) house here for $500 a month, or buy a trailer and rent or buy a spot for it for even less.
We’re on the edge of the Charlotte metro sprawl (such as it is, Atlantans scoff). Fifty miles east, prices look like my grandparents’ generation.