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.No one knows about us.Being illegal is just a labelthat doesn t mean anything. The Ironbound s thriving community consistedof restaurants, shops, and homes for newcomers. I thought I was still in Por-tugal, remarked one.Brazilians, who spoke Portuguese, began to settle therein the 1990s.Greeks were a third European group to benefit from the 1965 law.Between1960 and 1980, 170,000 Greek immigrants arrived, generally settling amongcompatriots in Chicago and New York City.In New York they headed for theAstoria section of the borough of Queens, and another 20,000 or so locatedin Chicago.A Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee beganin New York in 1972 to help immigrants adjust in their new circumstances.Despite good educations many Greeks accepted menial jobs in restaurants,coffee shops, construction, and factories.But enterprising families refused to Immigration After World War II, 1945 1998 105stay at the bottom and soon purchased businesses of their own.In 1980Newsweek asserted that the Greeks had all but taken over [New York City]coffee shops. The most dramatic impact of the 1965 Immigration Act was on Asia.Inmany of the years after 1965 Asians accounted for over 40 percent of thenewcomers; about 6 million arrived between 1970 and 1995.Not evencounting refugees, nations such as the Philippines, Korea, China, and Indiawere among the top sending groups.While Korean immigration droppedsomewhat in the 1990s, migration from the Philippines, India, Vietnam, andChina remained strong.Table 5.1 gives the ten leading sources of immigra-tion to the United States in 1995 and 1996.The more than 16 million immigrants who arrived after 1970 settled in allparts of the United States, but about three quarters concentrated in the na-tion s four largest states: California, Texas, New York, and Florida; and twoothers, Illinois and New Jersey.Ellis Island is now a tourist attraction; today,most new arrivals come through airports.Los Angeles is the leading centerfor immigration, and New York is second.Mexicans and Central Americanssimply come across the southwestern border.New York attracts many im-migrants from the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia, while Los Angeles and Cal-ifornia receive Latinos and Asians.Los Angeles was 72 percent Anglo in1960, but by 1980 people of European ancestry comprised only 40 percent ofthe city s population.Indeed, as the twentieth century came to an end, theTable 5.1 America s Recent ImmigrantsImmigrants Admitted from the Top 10 Countries of BirthCountry of Admission 1996 19951.Mexico 163,572 89,9322.Philippines 55,876 50,9843.India 44,859 34,7484.Vietnam 42,067 41,7525.China, People s Republic 41,723 35,4636.Dominican Republic 39,604 38,5127.Cuba 26,466 17,9378.Ukraine 21,079 17,4329.Russia 19,668 14,56010.Jamaica 19,089 16,398source: Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Year-book 106 Immigration After World War II, 1945 1998state of California was on the verge of seeing its European-origin populationbecome a minority.By the late 1990s one third of New York City s popula-tion was foreign born, a figure similar to the high-water mark of the firstdecades of the twentieth century.New York City was truly a world city de-mographically.Table 5.2 shows the 30 most popular metropolitan areas forimmigrant settlement.The amazing diversity and demographic change were not limited to NewYork and Los Angeles.Miami housed many Cubans after 1960 and otherLatinos after 1980.Arabs prayed five times a day in Dearborn, Michigan, andtransformed many streets in that community into a Middle Eastern phan-tasmagoria.In New Jersey were many Indians, and along the Texas-Mexicoborder, Mexicans.Like ethnic groups before them, Muslims establishedsummer camps for their children.One such camp in Pennsylvania made nobones about its intention to relax the body and strengthen the belief. Tocounter views of other Americans about Islam and terrorism, banners in thedining room stated, No to terrorism, yes to moderation. While Californiawas known for its Asian and Latino population, in the San Diego area a smallcommunity of refugees from Somali appeared after 1991.Its section wascalled little Mogadishu, after the capital of Somali.If diversity has been part of the new immigration, another change in recentyears is that so many of the new wave of immigrants are now living in thesuburbs.In 1986 the Census Bureau reported that about half of the 4.7 mil-lion immigrants arriving between 1975 and 1985 had settled in suburbanareas rather than in central cities.And they often lived among other Ameri-cans, not in ghettoes of their own ethnic groups.While the Asian populationof New York City doubled in the 1970s, it tripled in the city s suburbs.Innearby Bergen County, New Jersey, an official suggested that the Asian pop-ulation was growing even faster after 1980.A Japanese journalist who livedin prosperous Scarsdale, New York, remarked that the late-night commutertrain from New York City was dubbed the Orient Express, because somany Asian fathers were on it.Outside Los Angeles, Monterey Park becamethe nation s first Asian-American city or suburb.Sometimes called Man-darin Park by those who disliked the changing demography, it was over halfAsian (mostly Chinese) in 1994 but had been 85 percent white in 1960.Immigration will continue to be dominated by developing nations, at leastin the near future.Knowledge about the United States is plentiful around theglobe and so is the desire to emigrate.Commenting on the situation in Israel,one scholar noted, Communications are dominated by the big eye of tele-vision where the American influence is large, indeed almost inescapable
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