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i feel like once you're in a boat you're in a boat...immigrants form the caribbean routinely skip over everything in between NY and FL. Mexican migration seems to be largely over land.
People dont migrate in boats anymore though. People who move from Haiti to Boston would come in the same way you or I would: by plane. Haitians still choose Boston because there is an established community there. Same for Salvadorans in DC or Mexicans in Chicago.
Yes. There is no real established community of size there. People from other countries migrate to where they have a support network. Look at the Salvadorans in DC. Its the 2nd largest community in the US and even further than Mexico is from Boston. But because a community was established there en mass, people still move there.
But the the clear follow-up question is: why did a community never form? Boston is one of the county’s largest employment centers, and Mexican’s are the country’s largest Latino group.
BBMM’s suggestion seems the most logical so far: that Boston’s Latin community is so island-heavy that other Spanish-speaking immigrant groups might not fit in. There are 2 problems with this theory, though. The first is the NYC and Philly have large Mexican communities despite also having large, dominant Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Another problem is that Boston has fairly large Colombian, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan communities relative to the rest of the country.
Here are the numbers for foreign born growth from 2013-2018. Ive only done the ones with over 250k foreign born.
Since there has been some clamoring for city limits data, Ill do that shortly. Based on the data below, Florida and Texas are the biggest standouts, but Boston, Seattle, and the DC and SF CSAs are looking very strong too:
Miami/Fort Lauderdale: 280,250
Houston: 225,100
Dallas/Fort Worth: 225,009
Boston: 131,495
Seattle: 129,967
Orlando: 128,875
Washington DC: 117,693
New York: 112,142
Atlanta: 106,910
San Francisco: 102,845
Philadelphia: 91,594
Tampa: 90,086
Phoenix: 61,428
Minneapolis/St. Paul: 59,602
Las Vegas: 55,655
Riverside: 55,231
Sacramento: 50,795
San Jose: 49,340
Detroit: 45,579
Austin: 44,372
San Antonio: 39,507
Baltimore: 35,784
Charlotte: 35,054
Portland: 31,832
San Diego: 28,443
Denver: 25,728
Los Angeles: -6,982
Chicago: -14,630
But the the clear follow-up question is: why did a community never form? Boston is one of the county’s largest employment centers, and Mexican’s are the country’s largest Latino group.
BBMM’s suggestion seems the most logical so far: that Boston’s Latin community is so island-heavy that other Spanish-speaking immigrant groups might not fit in. There are 2 problems with this theory, though. The first is the NYC and Philly have large Mexican communities despite also having large, dominant Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Another problem is that Boston has fairly large Colombian, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan communities relative to the rest of the country.
It could be that the island heavy hispanic community that is largely ingrained into the black community make it unappealing to mexicans having to intermingle heavily with both caribbean hispanics and blacks mightbe unappealing.
Also MA union labor and the slow pace of construction +long winters make improvisational contracting unfeasible. Eastern MA's extremely rocky/infertile terrain and lack of anything remotely agricultural throughout eastern MA make useless to newly arrived Mexicans who tend to find work in agriculture.
But the the clear follow-up question is: why did a community never form? Boston is one of the county’s largest employment centers, and Mexican’s are the country’s largest Latino group.
BBMM’s suggestion seems the most logical so far: that Boston’s Latin community is so island-heavy that other Spanish-speaking immigrant groups might not fit in. There are 2 problems with this theory, though. The first is the NYC and Philly have large Mexican communities despite also having large, dominant Puerto Rican and Dominican communities. Another problem is that Boston has fairly large Colombian, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan communities relative to the rest of the country.
This immigration picked up only when Mexican immigration started to cool down nationwide. These are pretty recent arrivals to Boston's Hispanic community and they're really not that large.
It could be that the island heavy hispanic community that is largely ingrained into the black community make it unappealing to mexicans having to intermingle heavily with both caribbean hispanics and blacks mightbe unappealing.
Also MA union labor and the slow pace of construction +long winters make improvisational contracting unfeasible. Eastern MA's extremely rocky/infertile terrain and lack of anything remotely agricultural throughout eastern MA make useless to newly arrived Mexicans who tend to find work in agriculture.
Mexicans move in large numbers to the Bronx, where there is a heavy presence of both Caribbean Hispanics + blacks
They also move in large numbers to Flatbush, Brooklyn which is a Caribbean stronghold
Mexicans move in large numbers to the Bronx, where there is a heavy presence of both Caribbean Hispanics + blacks
They also move in large numbers to Flatbush, Brooklyn which is a Caribbean stronghold
Then maybe it's the latter part of my post, I dont know. But I also feel like NYC is NYC and that's a way stronger magnet for immigration of any and every type.
Then maybe it's the latter part of my post, I dont know. But I also feel like NYC is NYC and that's a way stronger magnet for immigration of any and every type.
That is true.
It could likely be coincidence, plus Boston is expensive but unlike LA or even NYC, they don't have an established community there.
People dont migrate in boats anymore though. People who move from Haiti to Boston would come in the same way you or I would: by plane. Haitians still choose Boston because there is an established community there. Same for Salvadorans in DC or Mexicans in Chicago.
Since I seem to be the person making the case for Philadelphia here, I think it worth noting, as I alluded to upthread, that the Philadelphia region is a latecomer to both the immigration and global-city game.
I moved here in 1983. Back then, we couldn't even persuade the kids who came here to study at Penn or Temple (yes, Temple does draw students from beyond the Philadelphia region, and its now-disgraced most famous alumnus, Bill Cosby, had a lot to do with making it a national draw) to stick around once they were done if they didn't live here already.
This all began to change in the mid-1990s. That was when immigrants became a noticeable presence in the city. Though there was a canary-in-the-coal-mine harbinger of this change: in the 1990 Census, most of the neighborhoods of the city continued to post population losses save two: Center City and Juniata Park in the lower Northeast.
That latter neighborhood saw its population rise mainly due to immigration from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
And it was in the 1990s that some of our Philly-born-and-bred elected officials copped wise to the phenomenon and proposed creating offices of immigrant services like those that exist in several other cities, Boston IIRC being one of these. What we did get instead was a privately funded nonprofit, the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians.
I think it might be more instructive to see the time-series figures on immigrant population growth for Philadelphia especially in light of this.
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