The United States was built on immigration, and New York City is and has been lucky enough to be the portal for the great tides of humanity that have surged into this country in search of a better life. The immigrants who have flowed into and through New York have shaped and reshaped its character since the day the first Dutch settlers stepped off the New Netherland onto what would become Manhattan in May, 1623.¹ The importance of immigration to the city of New York can hardly be overstated. In times when a large percentage of New Yorkers were born outside of the United States, as in the 1940s or the mid 1990s, the city has flourished economically, while in times when the city is sparsely populated by first-generation immigrants, as in the 1970s or 1980s, the city has faced crime, deterioration, and crises in confidence.²

It is largely because of immigration that New York continues to flourish today, while other cities in the northeast "rust belt" like Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, Cleveland and Detroit find themselves in dire economic straights.

Immigrants here [in New York City] are salving a number of chronic ailments — suburban flight, erosion of the tax base, long-term dependency on social services — that hobble many big American cities. ... New York demographers credit immigrants with heading off a potentially "catastrophic" population drain. For as the immigrants poured into the city in recent years, longtime New Yorkers poured out, at a rate of more than 100,000 a year.³

Natives of all American cities have been leaving for the suburbs for decades, and native New Yorkers included, but New York alone has been replenished by immigrants, who flow in at a rate of about 113,000 a year,⁴ which more than makes up for the suburban, mostly white, flight.

These waves of immigration make New York probably the most racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse place in the world, and one of the most exciting. What other city is so packed with energy and life? In what other city can one hear 25 different languages spoken in a public school? It is a continuous blessing to the city that while waves from particular countries may dry up as conditions in the country of origin change, immigrants from other countries soon fill their places. "What makes New York exceptional is that even as many have left the city, others have always been ready to take their place."⁵ A good example of New York's eclectic magnetism is the Queens neighborhood of Corona, which

is boiling over with immigrants, more of whom arrive every week. Since the 1970s, it has gone from predominantly Jewish and Italian, to African American, to Puerto Rican, to Dominican and, in the past few years, to a stew of Colombians, Central Americans, South Americans, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Koreans and Mexicans.⁶

While earlier in this century New York was a haven for Jews, Italians and Irish immigrants, it is now one for Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Brazilians, Chinese, and Greeks.

So immigrants steadily come to New York, but why are they really such a boon for the city? The answer lies in the fact that even if they live crammed four to a room in a tenement in the most densely populated place in the U.S., life for them is still better than it was in their old country, because of the wealth and opportunity that still exist in the world's oldest constitutional democracy. A free economic system, as Adam Smith first demonstrated in 1776, tends to produce the most wealth, and the United States, even today, guarantees to its citizens more rights than most other countries would feel comfortable doing, economic and otherwise. Immigrants who come to New York, as opposed to some other American city, are thus given the added bonus of living and working in the world's capital of capitalism, the 20th Century epicenter of a revolutionary new way of organizing labor that has generated more wealth for humanity in a shorter time than any other method such as feudalism or communism. Since the United States is the richest country in the world it's easy for many Americans to lose perspective on how glorious Brooklyn and Queens are in the eyes of the immigrant who has lived all her life in a favela outside São Paulo or the slums of Calcutta.

It is the dream of living in America that drive people to make the arduous journey to New York from the far corners of the globe. To those who hope to come to New York there is a sense that the new country will truly be a land "of milk and honey," a land of opportunity. There is a feeling that though things may not be going so well now, as soon as they get to the United States they will be able to get a new start. Kate Simon's mother was one of those optimists. "I was told that he [Simon's father in New York] was in a place where everything was good ... . If a toy broke, he would buy me another, a better one, when we got to America."⁷ Our streets aren't lined with gold, but to bring so many people to the United States and New York all that's needed is the perception that they are.

Those who do make it to New York are excited, thankful, and feel they are lucky to be in (North) America. They are therefore willing to work, and work hard, at low-wage or less prestigious jobs that natives wouldn't want,⁸ in a city that already works harder than just about any other.⁹ "As compared with native-born New Yorkers, recent immigrants are less likely to use social services, more likely to have jobs and more likely to own businesses."¹⁰ Recent immigrants simply tend to be hard-working. It is true today, when two native New Yorkers portrayed by Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing, automatically assume that a local Korean businessman, who barely speaks English, has lived in New York for less than a year; and it was true decades ago, when memoirist Alfred Kazin's mother's pride caused her to proclaim: "Better I should work all night than we should take from the city."¹¹ Imagine what would be possible if all Americans had that attitude! (In all probability, more cities would be as magnificent as New York.)

New York's magnificence is the result of the hard work generations of recent immigrants, who not only build up the city, but push and pull it in new directions culturally as they come to be more influential. In New York, where waves of immigration wash over city, immigrants find themselves trying to assimilate themselves into a world that is largely characterized and controlled by the groups that have come before them. The groups that have been in New York for a while are the ones that temporarily find themselves in power.

[A] thought depressed Kramer. Here they were, himself and Andriutti, the Jew and the Italian, wolfing down their sandwiches, ordered in, inside the fortress ... . How could this setup survive long enough for them to reach the top of the pyramid ... ? Sooner or later the Puerto Ricans and the blacks would pull themselves together politically, and they would seize even Gibraltar and everything in it.¹²

How long a group is here pretty much determines how much political and economic power its members will have. The Wasps, who came first and have the largest numbers, still have control of Wall Street, for the most part, but they long ago lost control of Gracie Mansion and Wolfe's Bronx courthouse, "Gibraltar." American popular culture is largely still dictated by values originally brought over by the English Wasps, but it has been changed by different immigrant groups. For example, New York's version of English is full of words that were introduced by immigrants, like "babushka," "schmuck," "kamikaze," and "knish," and it is hard to imagine that the advertising campaign hinged upon the phrase "Yo quiero Taco Bell" would be too successful in England, Ireland, or Australia.

But just as immigrants change the city, the city changes immigrants. Some embrace it, others fight against it, but inevitably, if to varying degrees, every immigrant to New York takes in some amount of American popular culture at the expense of their culture of their old country.¹³ People from around the world begin learning English, dressing in American styles, eating American food (which itself includes foods from many cultures), and becoming "Americanized" in scores of other ways as well. Immigrants are desperate to succeed in their new surroundings, and that usually means throwing off the yoke of revealing cultural foibles. Immigrants usually want others to perceive them as being American; they try to forget about their pasts. As Paul Cowan summarized:

In this land of limitless possibilities, one's past seemed to be an encumbrance; something that was filled with atavistic superstitions, that was anathema to enlightened people, that presented an obstacle to personal progress.¹⁴

The younger the immigrant, the stronger is this desire to assimilate into American culture, and the easier it is to do so. Especially for immigrants from countries that do not send many people to the United States, remaining in the world of one's parent's country subjects one to negative stereotypes, while becoming an American culturally offers prestige, social acceptance, and wealth. Assimilation depends upon leaning American cultural values and mannerisms, and a lot of it simply depends on learning English. As Kazin notes, "English was peculiarly the ladder of advancement."¹⁵

Children and adolescents desperate to assimilate are aided by the fact that New York popular culture is accepting of anyone. A Korean and a Senegalese can both be deemed "cool" by native New Yorkers, provided they don't have a funny accent or totally off-the-wall customs that natives cannot understand. There is no room for ethnic discrimination in a city that is so full of different ethnicities.

There is a pull toward American culture that comes from within, from a desire to fit in and succeed. It is complemented by a pull toward assimilation from without: the enticement of American popular culture. The fun of the movies, music, and parties that are American usually win an easy victory over the stodgy customs of a child's parent's yesteryear. As Kazin candidly notes, "That poor worn synagogue could never in my affections compete with that movie house."¹⁶ While the movies provide a tantalizing escape from a harsh reality of work, the synagogue only serves to remind a young immigrant of burdens and responsibilities he would probably rather forget.

But it's more important for many older immigrants to see their children succeed in America than to succeed themselves. "My father and mother worked in a rage to put us above their level. ... We were the only conceivable end to all their striving; we were their America."¹⁷ Thus They fill public libraries and make sure their children attend school every day, in hopes that one day their children will "make it." The Queens public library, as recently highlighted by the Washington Post, is by far the busiest library in the country, mainly because Queens has the highest proportion of immigrants of any New York borough, and immigrants make the most use of libraries.¹⁸ "The extraordinary love affair between immigrants and libraries is a century-old story in New York. ... The most crowded libraries in New York have always been in neighborhoods with the largest population of recent immigrants."¹⁹ Immigrants love to read. Ample literary evidence for this love affair is given by the immigrant memoirs of Kazin and Kate Simon. Both stated that books and education played a big role in their young lives, and that they spent much time in the library.

For immigrant children, then, the dual pull factors from within and without work in tandem with a push from their parents. Immigrant parents work so hard at educating their children that they are liable to find themselves separated from their children by a cultural fissure. Immigrant parents become victims of their own success if they can no longer meaningfully communicate with their American children. "My mother and I have a serious communication problem; we don't speak the same language. ... At home we mainly send messages through gestures. It is frustrating," said one teenage foreign-born New Yorker.²⁰ The threat of a communications breakdown, though, can be more incentive for the parents to assimilate. "If I don't learn about American culture and speak English, I could lose them [my kids]. If they think I not understand, they not do what I say," fretted one Chinese-American parent who studies English during the day.²¹

As Cowan notes, immigrants who come to New York "pa[y] for the freedom and prosperity this country offer[s] with their pasts." Being an immigrant is a struggle, but, oddly or obviously, one that immigrants seem uniquely capable of surmounting (after all, they are a self-selected group). Besides having to work multiple, usually arduous or monotonous jobs, immigrants have the additional psychological burden of severing most ties with their pasts and starting a new life from scratch. They assume a new identity that is often quite different from their old one, but most often do so willingly because they are happy to be in America.

Year by year, immigrants and New York shape each other as they come into contact. New York is lucky to have the immigrants, and the immigrants are generally glad to be in New York; both the people and the place benefit from the existence of the other. It is a great deal, the city gets people who want to work hard, and oppressed masses find a place where they can be free, and wealthier than they were before. The losers in the equation are the old country, which is deprived of valuable population, and the old culture, which is reluctantly left by the wayside or eagerly flung away, quickly shaken off or quietly tucked away in favor of a new, ever-changing American identity. For immigrants caught in the war between the old culture and New York popular culture, New York's eventually wins.²²

¹Ellis, Edward Robb, The Epic of New York City (New York: Kondansha International, 1997) 23-24.

²References to population derived from Harden, Blaine and Jay Mathews, "New Mix Enlivens N.Y. Melting Pot," Washington Post, May 26, 1997, A1, A14-15: A14.

³Harden and Mathews, A14.

⁴Harden, Blain, and Jill Dutt, "Manhattan Floats on Tide of Money and Migration," Washington Post, May 25, 1997, A1, A22-23: A1.

⁵Jackson, Kenneth T. "100 Years of Being Really Big," The New York Times op-ed page. Emphasis added.

⁶Harden and Mathews, A14.

⁷Simon, Kate, Bronx Primitive (New York: Penguin Books, 1982) 18.

⁸Anecdotal evidence for this is found in the following quote from Hector Mayorga, a New Yorker recently arrived from Mexico who works two jobs (unloading trucks for $7.50 an hour and running errands for an architect) totalling 14 hours a day: "I have a really great appreciation that this country has given me the opportunity to work." Harden and Mathews, A1.

⁹Jackson.

¹⁰Harden and Mathews, A14, citing "a city analysis of census figures."

¹¹Kazin, Alfred, A Walker in the City (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1951) 149.

¹²Wolfe, Tom, The Bonfire of the Vanities (New York: Bantam Books, 1987) 135-136.

¹³The possible exception to this rule is the group of people who even now serve, more or less, as the dominant group, the English, or the Wasps. They had the good fortune of coming to New York early and in large numbers, and could be said to have brought their culture with them to New York.

¹⁴Cowan, Paul, An Orphan in History, quoted in essay question #2.

¹⁵Kazin, 22.

¹⁶Kazin, 40.

¹⁷Kazin, 56.

¹⁸A little jab at L.A. seems justified here: "The Los Angeles library serves about 1.4 million more people than the Queens library, but last year people in Queens checked out 4 million more books." Harden, Blaine, "A Boroughful of Bookworms," Washington Post, April 28, 1998, A1, A8: A8. Mike Davis could have used that statistic in his chapter in City of Quartz, "Los Angeles Intellectuals, an Introduction."

¹⁹Harden, A8.

²⁰Mi hui Pak, 18, a Korean immigrant. Harden and Mathews, A15.

²¹Harden, A1.

²²Interestingly enough, as Benjamin R. Barber points out in his book Jihad vs. McWorld (New York: Ballantine Books, 1996), this maxim even appears to hold true for the rest of the world as well. As American popular culture, largely formulated in New York, meets ancient cultures around the globe, it tends to win, but that is a subject for another paper entirely. Suffice it to say that in the future, perhaps immigrants to New York will be making a smaller cultural leap.

Barber, Benjamin. Jihad vs. McWorld. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996.

Cowan, Paul. An Orphan in History. (As quoted in "Final Paper Suggestions" handout of March 19, 1998.)

Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City. New York: Kondansha International, 1997.

Harden, Blaine. "A Boroughful of Bookworms." Washington Post, April 28, 1998: A1, A8.

Harden, Blaine, and Jill Dutt. "Manhattan Floats on Tide of Money and Migration" ("City on the Rebound" series, part 1 of 2). Washington Post, May 25, 1997: A1, A22-23.

Harden, Blaine, and Jay Mathews. "New Mix Enlivens N.Y. Melting Pot" ("City on the Rebound" series, part 2 of 2). Washington Post, May 26, 1997: A1, A14-15.

Jackson, Kenneth T. "100 Years of Being Really Big." The New York Times op-ed page (date and page number unknown). In-class handout January 22, 1998.

Kazin, Alfred. A Walker in the City. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1951.

Simon, Kate. Bronx Primitive. New York: Penguin Books, 1982.

Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. New York: Bantam Books, 1987.