Oscar-nominated screenwriter says American refugees are being pushed out of blue states to red ones

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and novelist Roger L. Simon said that the leadership and the condition of Democrat run-states has caused "American refugees" to leave them behind and go live in red states. 

Simon lived in Los Angeles, California for many years before moving to Tennessee with his family in 2018. He told Just the News in an interview that the earliest he saw this "migration" of Americans from blue to red states started in 2016. 

"There are three groups of people who moved," Simon said. "There are the computerees (tech people), those who moved during the pandemic phase and those who moved post-pandemic." 

He explained that he wanted his upcoming book titled "American Refugees: The Untold Story of the Mass Migration from Blue to Red States," to give an idea of what it's like to pack up, move and start over in a new place. 

"It's written like a personal memoir and talks about the pluses and minuses of doing it," Simon said. "It gives an idea of what it's like to move. Some people are reluctant to do it, but that's life."

According to Fox News, a report came out that populations of red states such as Texas and Florida skyrocketed between the years of 2022 and 2023. 

The report reads that the population of Texas went from 30,029,848 on July 1, 2022, to 30,503,301 on the same day in 2023. In Florida, the state had a growth from 22,245,521 in 2022 to 22,610,726 in 2023. These statistics are borne out by the "U-Haul Index", a dataset in which U-Haul calculates growth cities by each city’s net gain (or loss) of one-way equipment from customer transactions in a calendar year. That index is often relied upon by social and political scientists to take a snapshot of migration.

Simon explained that while a lot of people move to different states for economic reasons or tax cuts, many people also move for ideological reasons. 

"One of the interesting things that I discovered and that I write about extensively in the book, is the assumption of people in places like Tennessee, and Texas, and so forth.... those of us who are coming from California or New York....that we're going to bring our awful, liberal values with us," he said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "And it turned out to be oddly opposite in many cases."

He explained that many of the people who moved to the conservative states ended up "saving the states from themselves."

"There’s a political class in the Republican Party in certain states like Georgia and Tennessee," Simon said. "I've heard them referred to as southern Democrats in new clothes. They are more concerned about paying off buddies in local businesses than saving the country and the constitution it was founded on."

He explained that in some of the local counties in states like Tennessee, there are woke elements in the school boards and city councils and he explained that the "American refugees" have been standing up to it. 

"I also talk about Texas and Florida and Georgia," he said. "Georgia has a lot of problems. So it's an interesting conundrum. The refugees formed a cavalry in a little bit of a way to save the red states from themselves."

Simon's book comes out on Jan. 9 and has been reviewed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson as "the best account of our generation’s greatest migration.”