A recent article in the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that Hispanic immigrants have grown to 27.3 percent of the population of Nevada in the last decade, growing to include immigrants from South American countries such as Chile, Colombia, and El Salvador in addition to Mexico.

This growth is led in part by an increase in economic opportunities. While the nation's Hispanic population is still majorly concentrated in the Southwestern United States, it continues to disperse across the United States. Hispanics on the whole tend to be mobile and a revealing statistic from the Pew Research Hispanic Trends Project shows that the percentage of Hispanics who lived in the same counties across a 10-year period decreased. That trend continues as Hispanics spread across the country.

The report, written by Anna Brown and Mark Hugo Lopez of the Pew Research Center, says that while many counties across the country have experienced a decline in their Hispanic population, the majority of them experienced an increase, meaning that the Hispanic population is becoming more evenly spread across the nation: "Among the nation's 3,143 counties, 3,018 experienced positive growth in their Hispanic population, with the notable exception of New York County which has a Hispanic population of 410,681 and experienced a 2% population decline since 2000. Overall, 114 counties saw a decline in their Hispanic population between 2000 and 2011." This demographic shift is likely to continue in the next decade.

Latinos have been in the United States since the very beginning. In a Special to CNN, Ray Suarez explained: "Once upon a time, the Latino presence in the United States was largely a regional phenomenon, and outside the Southwest, a big-city one. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were concentrated in the border and Western states, with an outpost in the Great Lakes states; Cubans in South Florida and the Northeast; Puerto Ricans in New York and its suburbs. Certainly not exclusively, but the pattern was largely in place by World War II and remained that way for decades." Eventually, changes in immigration laws shifted the focus from Europeans to Latin Americans.

According to the same Pew report, 71 percent of the Hispanic population is currently contained within 100 counties. "Half (52%) of those counties are in three states-California, Texas and Florida. Along with Arizona, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey and Illinois, these eight states contain three-quarters (74%) of the nation's Latino population." Out of the three states that contain over half of the United States Hispanic population, more than one quarter of them live in California, accounting for 14.4 million people. Los Angeles County is the top-ranking county by Hispanic population, accounting for 4.8 million Hispanics or 9 percent of the United States Hispanic population. The next three largest counties by Hispanic population are Harris County, Texas, Miami-Dade County, Fla., and Cook County, Ill.

The report also says that immigrants from Latin American countries are the nation's fastest growing minority group, far outnumbering immigrants from all other countries: "According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2013), the Latino population in 2012 was 53 million, making up 17% of the U.S. population. Latino population growth between 2000 and 2010 accounted for more than half of the nation's population growth." A recent Nielson Company Newswire reported that new immigration gateways have enabled Latinos to form new populations in suburban destinations: "More and more Hispanics are also making the transition to the suburbs -- a contrast from their historical tendency to stay within city centers. Houston, a market where Hispanics make up 36 percent of the population-mostly within the city center-has seen its Hispanic population in the suburban city limits grow by 227 percent over the last decade."

The influence of Hispanics can be seen everywhere. CNN Opinion writer Chiqui Cartagena put it in perspective: "From the grocery aisle where you pick up your Corona beer and your dulce de leche ice cream, to the Billboard charts where Pitbull, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez routinely dominate, to the lunch you order at Chipotle or Panera or, in fact, at the great American fast feeder, McDonald's -- the Latino effect is everywhere. The media and both political parties now readily acknowledge that it was the influence of the Latino vote in the key swing states that got President Barack Obama re-elected last year." She also points out that the Latino baby boom and growing number of retirees will color the American political and economic landscape for the next half century. Hispanics make up nearly half of all millennials, for example.

Mexico and Puerto Rico are the two countries with the largest number of Hispanics in the United States. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans comprise the largest Hispanic origin groups in nine of the most Hispanic States in the United States: California, Texas, New York, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, Colorado, New Mexico, and Georgia. Mexicans account for 64.6 percent of the Hispanic population, despite not being the dominant Hispanic group in "Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Rhode Island." After Mexico and Puerto Rico, the most represented countries are El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Spain.

Thirteen counties in the United States are already majority Hispanic, with the top two being Laredo, Texas and McAllen-Edinburg-Pharr-Mission, Texas, with Hispanics numbering 95.4 percent and 90.7 percent of their respective populations. The smallest counties by Hispanic population (out of the top 60) tend to be in the Midwest and Central East Coast, with the two smallest Hispanic counties being Detroit, Michigan and Baltimore, Md. in which Hispanics number 4.1 percent and 4.8 percent of their respective populations.

With Hispanics being such a driving force in the United States population today, this has ramifications for both the country's business and politics. Forbes contributor Glenn Llopis recently wrote that "Most U.S.-based firms have a significant corporate imperative to attract Hispanic consumers, given their tremendous demographic and economic importance. Some companies, such as McDonald's, Budweiser, and AT&T, are spending significant resources to gain market share with Hispanics and are making inroads." How can companies do this? According to Monica Gill, the Senior Vice President of Public Affairs and Government Relations at Nielson Company, "Latinos are emerging as a powerhouse of economic influence, presenting marketers an increasingly influential consumer group that can translate into business impact.  The key is to recognize that today's modern Latino is 'ambicultural' with the ability to seamlessly pivot between English and Spanish languages and to embrace two distinct cultures. Understanding how to connect with this unique consumer profile will be key to successful engagement." The Hispanic population is the only area of growth that remains for domestic industries such as beverage, auto, and telecom, which have all maximized their market penetration.