IndiaPost.com - Immigrants are changing the face of New York

India Post News Service

NEW YORK: New York's immigrants are responsible for $229 billion in economic output in New York State, contributing 22.4 percent of the total State GDP, according to a just released report by the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI). Titled 'Working for a Better Life', the report is an overall profile of immigrants in the New York State economy, looking at the entire spectrum of immigration, upstate and downstate, documented and undocumented, black, white, Hispanic and Asian.

At a time when the immigrant debate is being polarized into "pro" and "anti," Working for a Better Life sets out to portray realistically the overall role of immigrants in the New York economy. Hoping that the report contributes to a richer and better-informed debate, the FPI prepared this report as part of The Truth about Immigrants, a joint project with The New York Immigration Coalition.

Despite the common impression that immigrants - who make up 21% of the state population - work primarily in low-wage jobs, immigrants in New York State are entrepreneurs, managers, and workers in jobs at all levels of the economy, from the lowest-paid day laborers to the highest-paid investment bankers.

Hispanic and Asian-owned businesses have been growing rapidly, sharply increasing the number of employees. In upstate and the downstate suburbs, about two thirds of immigrants own their own homes. In NYC, 57 percent of children live in a family with at least one foreign-born adult, in the downstate suburbs that figure is 31 percent, and upstate, eight percent.

Each of the three regions of New York State examined in Working for a Better Life has a particular dynamic of immigration. New York City: One of the signs of New York City's celebrated revival over the last 25 years has been its population growth.

Yet, without immigrants, population in the city would have declined rather than grown in recent years. Immigrants played a very important role in turning the declining neighborhoods of the 1970s into thriving communities today.

Today, 37 percent of the New York City population is foreign born. In a city where income polarization is one of the key concerns, immigrants are helping to expand the ranks of the middle class, with family income for people in immigrant families more likely to be in the middle ranges than for people in US-born families.

And, New York City immigrants are found in jobs from the top to the bottom of the corporate pyramid in virtually every sector. Immigrants, for instance, make up a quarter of all CEOs, half of accountants, a third of office clerks, a third of receptionists, and half of building cleaners. Of the 800,000 people who commute to work in New York City, 31 percent are immigrants. Immigrants make up 40 percent of commuters who work in service jobs, a third of commuters who work in the professional sector, and a quarter of those in management, business, and finance.

Immigrants are changing the face of New York, but less by expanding the ranks of different racial and ethnic groups than by diversifying the mix within each group. Blacks today are not only African American, but also Caribbean and African, adding new layers to what it means to be a black New Yorker. Whites are a quarter of all immigrants, from countries such as Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Greece, Israel, Romania and the former Yugoslavia.

Hispanics in New York a generation ago were primarily Puerto Rican, but today they are increasingly Dominican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, Columbian, Peruvian, Salvadoran, and more. And Asians, once primarily Chinese, now also come from Vietnam, Korea, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, as well as from parts of China that did not participate in earlier migrations. Downstate suburbs: In the downstate suburbs of Nassau, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, and Westchester Counties, immigrants are generally doing quite well, though not quite as well as their often affluent neighbors.

Overall, 18 percent of residents in the downstate suburbs are foreign-born. Families with at least one immigrant adult have a median income of $71,000, compared to $86,000 for families without a foreign-born adult. By contrast, the median family income in New York City is less than $40,000 for both immigrants and native-born residents.

The occupation with the largest number of immigrants in the downstate suburbs is registered nurses. And, 41 percent of all physicians and surgeons in the downstate suburbs are foreign-born, as are 28 percent of college and university professors, 22 percent of accountants and auditors, and 19 percent of financial managers. Upstate New York In upstate New York immigrants are doing generally just as well as US-born residents. The median family income in upstate New York is virtually the same for immigrants and US-born residents.

The three most common countries of origin for immigrants are Canada, India, and Germany. Mexico, the focus of so much public attention in the immigration debates, comes fourth. In universities, the pride of many upstate regions, 20 percent of professors are immigrants- four times their representation in the overall population. In health care, immigrants make up 35 percent of physicians and surgeons.

In scientific fields, related to upstate strength in research and development, immigrants make up 20 percent of computer software engineers. And in farming, an important part of upstate's cultural heritage and high quality of life, immigrants-both with visas and undocumented-make up an estimated 80 percent of the seasonal workers who pick the crops and keep the farms going. Conclusion: Because immigrants are a very large part of the New York economy, getting the immigration equation right is critical to the state's economic success. Particular importance should be paid to US-born workers who are struggling in the low-wage labor market and those who are being squeezed out of the middle class.

These US-born workers face very real economic problems, the report says. By the same token, immigrants are such an important part of the New York economy that "cracking down" on immigrants clearly could have unintended consequences with significant negative impacts. "English only" policies, racial profiling, or a generally anti-immigrant atmosphere will negatively affect a large number of people, families, and communities beyond the undocumented workers at whom the measures may purportedly be aimed.