Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City 1

Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states – California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced.