Caribbean immigration to New York City

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Caribbean immigration to New York City has been prevalent since the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.[1] This immigration wave has seen large numbers of people from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, come to New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries. (There has also been significant migration from Puerto Rico, but this is not considered immigration as Puerto Ricans hold United States citizenship.) Caribbeans are concentrated in the Bronx, from 211th Street to 241st Street and Gun Hill Road. There are also Caribbean communities in Brooklyn, especially in the neighborhoods of Flatbush and Prospect Heights.[2]

History

The West Indian Day Parade marching by the Brooklyn Museum

In 1613,

Juan (Jan) Rodriguez from Santo Domingo became the first non-indigenous person to settle in what was then known as New Amsterdam.[3]

In the early 1900s, the largest number of black immigrants were English-speaking

service sector working as doorman, laborers, and porters. Women often worked in the domestic field as maids and nannies. Reimers points out that a substantial number of Caribbean immigrants attended night school and pursued higher education while in America.[4]

New York City also witnessed the institution building of Caribbean blacks. Majority of Caribbeans were

Depression era, Caribbean immigration trailed off and fewer black immigrants traveled to New York City because of the scarcity of employment opportunities.[5]

Hispanic

New York City has large populations of Caribbean including Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and with smaller numbers of Panamanians, Cubans, Hondurans, and Costa Ricans.

Dominicans

Immigration records of Dominicans in the United States date from the late 19th century and New York City has had a Dominican community since the 1970s. From the 1960s onward, after the fall of the Rafael Trujillo military regime, large waves of migration have thoroughly transnationalized the Dominican Republic, metaphorically blurring its frontier with the United States.

In 2006 New York City's Dominican population decreased for the first time since the 1980s, dropping by 1.3% from 609,885 in 2006 to 602,093 in 2007. They are the city's fifth-largest national group (behind Irish, Italian, German and Puerto Rican) and, in 2009, it was estimated that they compromised 24.9% of New York City's Latino population.[6]

Areas with high a concentration of Dominicans are in Washington Heights, Corona, and certain areas in the Bronx. Eastern portions of the Washington Heights neighborhood and many western neighborhoods in the Bronx have some of the highest concentrations of Dominicans in the country.

Kinito Mendez played the song El avión which mentions Flight 587.[8] The November 12, 2001, AA587 flight crashed, killing everyone on board.[7]

Puerto Ricans

Puerto Ricans are Americans citizens by birth, so they are not immigrants.

The 2005 National Puerto Rican Parade.

New York City has the largest Puerto Rican population outside of Puerto Rico.

U.S. citizenship
, which allows travel without the need of a passport between the island and the United States mainland. The largest wave of migration came in the 1950s, in what became known as "The Great Migration"; as a result, more than a million Puerto Ricans once called New York City home. Presently the Puerto Rican population is around 800,000.

Puerto Ricans have historically lived in neighborhoods such as the

Spanish Harlem and Williamsburg, Brooklyn since the 1950s. There are large Puerto Rican populations throughout the 5 boroughs, with the Bronx having the largest. Currently, Bushwick and several South Bronx neighborhoods, such as Soundview
, have some of the largest numbers of Puerto Ricans in the city. However, there has been an increase in Puerto Ricans in outlying areas of the city, such as the North Shore of Staten Island, and the eastern Bronx.

Cubans

New York City has the third largest Cuban population.[9]

References

  1. ^ Maddox, Dr. Tyesha. "NEW YORK: A CARIBBEAN CAPITAL". littlecaribbean.nyc. Retrieved May 29, 2019.
  2. ^ "West Indian New York Today".
  3. ^ "New York City begins to celebrate first immigrant -- a Dominican". archive.ph. Archived from the original on June 24, 2013. Retrieved November 28, 2022.
  4. ^ West Indian Migration to New York
  5. ^ Reimers, David. Other Immigrants: The Global Origins of the American People. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2005. 77–82. Print.
  6. ^ Bergad, Laird W (April 2011). The Latino Population of New York City 2009 (PDF). Latino Data Project. Center for Latin American, Caribbean & Latino Studies. Retrieved February 10, 2013.
  7. ^ a b Younge, Gary (November 10, 2006). "Flight to the death". The Guardian. Archived from the original on November 13, 2012. Retrieved October 15, 2013.
  8. Salon. Archived from the original
    on November 28, 2011. Retrieved October 15, 2013.
  9. ^ "Cubans in the New York Metro Area" (PDF). unreachednewyork.com. November 2012.

Further reading
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