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It seems as if you're anywhere outside South Florida or New york city you'll hardly find any colombian..... I was in California for a week and looked for a colombian restaurant all over San Diego and they didnt have one, the only one was about two hours away somewhere in los angeles!!!
I also contacted an organization for Colombians in southern California and it was located in LA and they were showing me pictures of a colombian party they had, and it was like 15 people dancing!!!
I also have a niece who is colombian in North Carolina and she tells me at her school no one is colombian except her, so people often ask her where she's from because her physical appearance is quite uncommon there as everyone in her school is either
asian, indian, white-american, black-american or mexican!
I know some parts of south florida and of course NYC will have a colombian community with colombian stores, supermarkets, etc. but you can hardly find it anywhere else, why is that?
Atlanta, Orlando, and Houston also have good sized Colombian communities. Certainly nothing on the scale of NYC or Miami, but good sized none the less.
Ask your Colombian compatriots. All youre doing now is asking a forum full of non-Colombians to speculate.
Because South Florida and New York have had Colombian populations for some time now(I know there were Colombians in both areas in the 70s from my relatives in those areas)--and once you have a big community of a certain group, that's where people tend to go. And there's a lot of direct flights from Miami and NYC at this point. Just like why Armenians overwhelmingly immigrate to the Los Angeles area over other cities, or why Bosnians flock to the St. Louis area--because that's where the community is...
Because South Florida and New York have had Colombian populations for some time now(I know there were Colombians in both areas in the 70s from my relatives in those areas)--and once you have a big community of a certain group, that's where people tend to go. And there's a lot of direct flights from Miami and NYC at this point. Just like why Armenians overwhelmingly immigrate to the Los Angeles area over other cities, or why Bosnians flock to the St. Louis area--because that's where the community is...
I guess the question is why they chose to settle in New York in the first place.
Same answer as the answer to why there are so few Italians outside the northeastern US. People congregate with others like them, ethnically, racially, socioeconomically, whatever. Colombians will go to areas where there are large Colombian populations. It's rare to see an ethnic group that is still pretty small in numbers branch out of their usual areas, especially if they're new immigrants and don't want to assimilate yet.
Yeah, but I'm wondering why they chose New York when they could have chosen any number of U.S. cities. West Indians, for example, migrated to New York because many men became experts at using dynamite during the construction of the Panama Canal--knowledge that came in handy when building tunnels.
I guess the question is why they chose to settle in New York in the first place.
I suppose in part because New York had a somewhat significant Latin American population prior to the big influx of Colombians in the 70s(Afro-Cuban jazz and boogloo which became salsa was a lot in part the result of Cubans and Puerto Ricans in New York in the 30s through the 60s). Colombia is different culturally overall, though there's some broad similarities with the Spanish Caribbean. Outside of Florida--which has had a history of Cubans and other Carribbean groups there for some time and places like California and Texas Southwest US(which had historical Mexican and immigrant populations since incorporation into US) there wasn't as large and diverse of a Latin population in many US cities in those days.
And also because New York is often the first stop for a lot of immigrant groups. It's historically been a place where immigrants can show up and set up their neighborhood and because it's so diverse already there's not a lot of pressure on them to assimilate at first though there might be some conflict with earlier groups. The big cities are always where a lot of groups end up at first(due to transit links, economy, and just overall opportunities). There's certain immigrant groups that end up in certain places due to refugee resettling, but a lot of other immigrants would just chose New York... It's more recent that newer boom cities are seen as immigrant magnets--like Houston or Atlanta for example--which would have both been much different cities back in the 70s.
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