The
De-Americanization of New York:
Foreign Born Now a Majority
nce
the very symbol of urban America, New York City is now foreign
territory, inhabited by foreign populations. Most of the
people living there - at least 60 percent - are now foreign-born,
according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The
new demographic assessment of the city was reported in the
American Community Survey, a snapshot of population trends
issued annually by the Census Bureau.
The
survey found that the city's suburbs are not too far behind
in foreignization. In the 24 suburban counties around New
York, a record 20 percent of the people are foreign-born.
In New Rochelle, for example, the number of Mexicans rose
from less than 7,000 five years ago to about 12,000 today.
The share of foreign-born is 32 percent.
In
New York, the number of people who identified themselves
as Mexicans has increased by more than 36 percent in the
last five years. More than half the residents of Queens
and the Bronx do not speak English at home. Nearly one-third
of all blacks in the city were born in foreign countries.
Nearly
half a million new immigrants have flooded into the city
since 2000, the bureau said.
Joseph
J. Salvo of the Department of City Planning in New York,
expressed some concern that the rapid population growth
could strain city resources.
"We
may be reaching a point where the city's population gets
to be so large you can't keep adding. The pressure on housing
and our neighborhoods is still on," he said. Salvo
speculated that the number of foreign-born and their children
in the city may be well over 60 percent, "maybe even
two-thirds."
The
city's population trends reveal stark contrasts between
population groups living there. Among whites, for example,
43 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher, but only
21 percent of blacks and 14 percent of Hispanics do. Language
differences abound. Chinese is spoken by more than 350,000
city dwellers, Italian by 103,00, and Yiddish by 77,000.
More
city residents identify their ancestry as Italian than any
other single group, but West Indians run a close second.
People from the Dominican Republic are the single largest
national group of the foreign-born, numbering 532,000.
The
Census Bureau cautioned that the figures are not all-encompassing,
because the study did not include persons living in prisons,
nursing homes, or mental institutions.
