Effect of Immigration on New York City - Research Paper Example

Writing about New York City's population, Nathan Glazer noted, "If the United States remains the permanently unfinished country, to an even greater degree the same is true for New York City" (Vecoli, 567). Various reports show that immigration continues to shape the city. Immigrant flows are at an all time high since the peaks at the turn of the century. Immigration to the city in the 1990-2000 periods stood at approx 13,000 annually, a 32 percent increase over the average of 86,000 in the 1980s.

(Lobo, 12) This growth mirrored the increasing flow of immigrants to the country as a whole; as a result, immigrants to the city constituted nearly 15 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. in both the 1980s and 2000s. (Martin, 02) This article examines the nature of these recent immigrant flows and their impact on the city's population. Traditionally, immigrants to the city have been disproportionately from the Caribbean and South America relative to the nation, which has been more likely to get immigrants from Asia and Mexico.

The Caribbean comprised 33 percent of the flow of immigrants to the city, but only 12 percent of the flow to the nation in the 2005-2009 periods. . Likewise, Asians were 26 percent of the city's flow but comprised 42 percent of entering immigrants to the nation. (Martin, 5)The 2000s marked resurgence in European immigration to New York City, and a decline in the share of Caribbean flows. Immigration from Europe stood at 22 percent, more than twice the level of 9 percent in the 1990s. (Vecoli, 562) Caribbean immigration, which stood at 40 percent of the total in the 1990s, dropped 7 points in the 2000s.

However, the share of the Hispanic Caribbean (primarily the Dominican Republic) actually increased while there was a decline in flows from non-Hispanic Caribbean nations such as Jamaica, Haiti, and Barbados. Flows from Guyana, an English-speaking South American nation with a heavy Caribbean influence, also declined. The number of African immigrants to the city, while small, has been increasing steadily over the past three decades and comprised just over two percent of entering immigrants.The reason that immigrants are able to find jobs in the New York City and put a lot of people out of work is because they often take the low-paying jobs that most Americans don't want to do.

Even though a lot of people may not like immigrants because they are putting them out of jobs, immigrants in this economy today are helping to keep inflation low, improve housing values, and benefit taxpayers (Martin, par. 12). In other words, immigration helps provide an increase to the U.S. economy. The only people that are really being hurt right now by immigrants are those people without high school degrees (Gelfand and Yee, par. 10). Every year they fight against immigrants for jobs and their wages just seem to keep getting lower.

Immigrants who see their relatives and friends leading a better life