A lot of people on this will believe that Phila today is a city with diverse cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Just about everybody calls Phila, home, including myself. However, I don't think Phila has been doing a good job at attracting immigrants, despite the recent explosion of Mexicans in South Phila, as well as Chinese, Asian Indians, Vietnamese, and Combodians living in that area. Why I believe that Phila hasn't been doing a good job at attracting immigrants is because of the city's economy. Jobs, both blue collar and white collar, has been continuously dissapearing in this city and moving into either the suburbs in Montgomery and Delaware counties, and to Jersey. Part of the blame has a lot to do with the wage tax system, but I also believe that we haven't been getting enough qualified people to do the job, and immigrants are a part of that. If you look at other cities with a strong immigrant population like NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA, SF, Houston, DC, and Miami, you'll see that their local economy is much stronger than in Phila because all those cities were able to attract new immigrants and also utilize them in either the medical, law, education, engineering, and service trades. Ever since our manufacturing base left, Phila's economy has been crippled, and we're still playing catch-up with the other cities, particularly NYC.

Another effect of not getting any immigrants in this city is the ever-shrinking population. In 1950, we had reached our peak of over 2 million. In the 60's and 70's, due to the riots and closing of manufacturing plants, we had lost a significant amount of our population. In 1980, we had 1,600,000 people in the city. We was still the 4th largest city in America, but later on cities in the west and the south, like Houston and Phoenix surpassed us with, respectively, 1,800,000 and 1, 500,000 people. Our current population right now is somewhere about 1,480,000. As a result of the population, we had lost a seat in the House of Representatves, the city's recreational programs, like community centers, swimming pools, and playgrounds, which was supposed to serve 2 million people, have been closed down, as well as fire and police stations, and we've been losing a lot of money, because with a declining population, the city is forced to raise taxes, therefore making Phila an undesirable place to live. Even though the metropolitan area grew only slightly, it hasn't affected the city in any positive way, Especially with companies moving to the suburbs rather than Center City, and the continuous sprawl in Chester and Montgomery counties. Other cities had similar problems that I just mentioned, but they were able to compensate most of their losses and diversify their economy. Boston was the first city to lose it's manufacturing base starting in the 1950's.

That and the fact of racial tension in the city, mainly in the Roxbury and South Boston areas, contributed to it's population decline. After Boston realized that it was losing jobs, they started getting into the high-tech sector, with companies like Wang Laboratories and Honeywell. They also started to bacome a banking center with Fleet Bank, and insurance center with John Hancock insurance, a prestigious medical hub, and not to mention the fact that Boston had always been a major seaport as well as an important educational center with Harvard, Tufts, Boston College, and MIT as it's schools. One of the things that contributed to Boston's prosperity was immigration. It wasn't a major manufacturing center that it used to be, but a lot of the jobs, especially in the service sector, attracted a lot of immigrants. It has a distinctive Asian population (mainly Chinese and Vietnamese), as well as a large West Indian population (mainly Haitian, but also some Jamaicans, too),totaling 75,000, the third largest Caribbean population in America, behind NYC and Miami-Fort Lauderdale. The Hispanic population rose from 90,000 in that area from 1980 to 200 thousand today, mostly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. It's also has the largest Portuguese and Brazilian population in the country, totaling 300,000, and is the third largest Greek population, with 80,000. There are other ethnicities which make up Boston's population, like the Irish, the Italians, the Polish, the Germans, the French Canadians, the Jews, and the Swedish. The population of the Boston metropolitan area is similar to Phila's number, around 6.5 million.

But the biggest gainer in the population race has always been NYC. It has the biggest harbor in this country and it's the chief financial, cultural, and later, the transporation center in the country today, something that Phila used to be during the colonial times in America. Every nationality came to the US through Ellis Island in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and many settled in NYC, particularly the Italians, the Irish, the Germans, the Polish, the Jews, the Greeks, the Scandinavians, and the Slavs. The resulted in NYC to become the largest city in America, as well as the annexation of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens County, and Richmond County (later Staten Island), due to Chicago closing in on their number of over 2 million. In recent times, NYC lost it's manufacturing base, and it came to the point, that in the 70's NY State was the only state to see a significant decrease in the total population in the state due to the number of jobs moved overseas in the upstate cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse.

However in the 70's, NYC was also recieving new immigrants, which was a result of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, which allowed immigrants from West Indies, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, to come to this country. Many of them settled in NYC, and as a result stabilized, and even helped bring up not just NYC's population, but helping NY state to stabilize it's decreasing population. NYC has the largest Caribbean population in America, numbering 800,000, compromising of Jamaicans, Haitian, Trinidadians, Guyanese, Barbadians, and other people from the British West Indies. It also has the largest Puerto Rican population, numbering over a million, the largest Dominican population, numbering 600,000, and the largest Asian and Arab population in the East Coast.

Phila, on the other hand, despite not being a major immigration center in America, did recieve it's share of immigrants. The first immigrants were the Germans, who were quickly able to establish themselves in PA politics in the early 19th century, and were also landowners, industrialists, and businessmen. The Irish also came here, in substantial numbers during the potato famine in the 1840's and 1850's and continued to come before the civil war. The Jews, mainly from Russia, came over here to escape religious persecution during the 1870's, and the Polish came to America to escape poverty. Probably the biggest immigrants to come during that time was the Italians, mostly from the southern regions of Naples and Sicily, who also came here to escape poverty and gain prosperity. After WWI, Phila never really saw another immigration explosion like what NYC, Boston, Chicago, and Houston and currently seeing today. Even though our Asian population isn't big as NYC and SF, it's modest with Asian Indians, Chinese, and Vietnamese as the chief groups, each with at least 10,000 people in the city and about 50 to 70 thousand in the area, each of them making up at least 1 out of a hundred people. But a lot of groups are still missing. While we do have the third largest Puerto Rican population in America after NYC and Chicago, other Hispanic groups haven't been significant, despite the Mexican population in South Phila, like Domincans, who migrated to NYC, but due to overcrowding in NYC, might be coming to Phila to take advantage of the cheap housing.

I haven't really seen a visible Swedish population the Delaware valley, despite the fact that the Swedes and the Finns were the first the settle in Phila. I know there a couple sites that deal with the Swedish culture in this area, like the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church and the American Swedish Museum in FDR Park, but other than that, there isn't really a strong Swedish background in this city, which is probably something the city needs, especially since New Sweden was founded in modern-day Phila and the fact that most of the Swedes were getting "Americanized", that is Anglicizing their names and not maintaining their language after the English, led by William Penn, took over, and also since we missed out on getting a chunk of Scandinavians to settle in Phila and the Delaware Valley, since a lot of Scandinavians were considered good craftsmen, engineers, and industrialists, they would've been a lot of help during the Industrial Revolution. We also don't have a strong Greek population, which is another thing I noticed. Despite Phila's name being Greek in origin, I haven't really seen any Greek institutions and there isn't a significant Greek community in this city.

We missed out on getting them due to the fact that they were making NYC their home, and bypassing Philadelphia to go to Chicago. We could've needed them, as well, since the Greeks were considerd as hard workers in any trade. The Arab community is small here compared to NYC and Boston. It's population for this area is around 19,000, while Boston's is 50,000 and NYC is 250,000. We do have Arab communities in West Philadelphia (Walnut St and Clark Park area), in Kensington, and in South Phila, where the first Maronite Catholic Church in America was established, but not really a significant population. There is a growing Russian population in the Far Norteast, in Bustleton and Somerton. But possibly the biggest dissapointment is the lack of West Indians in the city and the rest of the area. While NYC boasts the largest Caribbean population in America with 800,000, followed by Miami-Ft Lauderdale with 300,000, and Boston by 75,000, you might figure that Phila might be in the top of the list, but we have simiar numbers like those of Chicago, a city known for having a large black population due to a lot of them coming from the South, with 30,000.

The only difference is that Chicago is in the Midwest, while we're in the East Coast, where there is a huge concentration of West Indians, particularly in the Northeast and in Florida. Why we're missing out is something I can't explain, but my beliefs stay the same: no jobs, inadequate transportation system, no particular outlet in the media and in the city, and the fact that Phila isn't as attractive as NYC and DC, where DC-Baltimore area has a West Indian population of 70,000, the fourth-largest in America. There are pockets of West Indian communities in Olney, Logan, Germantown, Mount Airy, and in West Phila and Overbrook, but the whole outlook in this city is that West Indians are basically just black and have no distinctive culture, other than the fact they speak with an accent.

A lot of West Indians are hard working people, something that they're known for, and are also known to be professionals in medical, business, finance, and education, and also good entrepeneurs. The difference between a black community and a West Indian community is that in black community, 98% of the businesses are owned by people of other races, like Koreans owning a grocery store, Chinese owning a restaurant, Jews owning apartment buildings, and maybe other people owning a particular business. The black community doesn't have the adequate training to hold these businesses and a a reasult, high unemployment, violent crimes, property crime, and drug usage are prevalent in most of the black communities in Phila. The only business in the black community is the church. A West Indian community might look like a typical black community, with all the black faces you see, but a lot of West Indians own their business too, from restaurants which cater to their tastes back in their respective homelands like Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, and Haiti, to laudromats, to grocery stores, to specialty stores, to the shipping business which helps send cargo to the Caribbean, to being dollar-cab drivers (jitney drivers), to lawyers, to teachers, and as good, hard-working citizens. And the fact that they are immigrants, they are also in charge of helping other immmigrants from their homeland adjust to life in America. It just seems that we're missing out on being an immigration center like the cities that I just mentioned.

And I don't think the mayor really cares about recieving new people and helping them out, but sucking the city completely dry of it's civil, public, recreational, educational, and transportation services, and the money. And because of it, we're losing our population. We need to change our outlook and our attitudes and treat them with respect because these immigrants will soon become Americans, and eventually their kids, and the kids' kids, just like when we was growing up and our parents or our ancestors were immigrants. As a mater of fact, every one, with the exception of the native Americans, had descended from an immigrant.

Sounds interesting. I'll have to read the whole thing later.

The lack of oportunities in this city is definitely driving even immigrants to the suburbs.

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Please, please use more paragraph breaks. This post is realy interesting but it hurts my eyes and head to read.

I have noticed that most of the Jamaicans I've encountered in Philly tend to have more of a "black" image than Caribbean.

One group Philly gets a large number of, though, is Albanians (a lot of them live in the Kensington/Fishtown area). They seem to have decided to settle in Philly, for some reason, just like South St Louis appears to get a large number of the Serbian immigrant population (which we also get a good bit of).

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In response to this thread I started looking for a similar one started earlier this year. I didn’t find it, but I did find all of these that deal with immigration and Philadelphia

Philadelphia losing the immigration race
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6758

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A Shift in Demographics
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=146

Immigration
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1093

The Border as Prophet
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5137

Ridge's Immigration Remarks
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1974

Immigration and the President's Proposed Policy
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2150

Philadelphia's underground workforce
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6353

Day labor in West Philadelphia
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5138

Venezuelan community in Philly?
http://phillyblog.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2976

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Hmmm. I think at least in West Philly as whole, the continuing influx of West Indians and Africans is the biggest demographic shift going on, larger in impact though largely overlooked by most folks than the increasing number of white folks in University City. It really is a quiet sea change going on, one that gives me al lot of hope for the future of the more beat up parts of farther West and SouthWest Philly.

I also think that the relationship between immigrant West Indians and Africans on the one hand and African American's is really thorny one that is lot more complicated than it seems at a casual glance. I have heard instances, for example of AfAm's, saying things like "Jamaican's don't respect black people" and a Hatian lady inquiring about apartment ask disdainfully whether any of the other people in the building were black. I think for both immigrant groups, Africans and West Indians, it is often convenient to "pass" as African Americanans so they do - but that amongst their own they guard their cultural differences jealously.

My Lenni Lenape friends say immigration isn't always such a great thing.

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Well, the ones I'm talking about were all hanging out with and/or married to AfAms, but then this is North Philly I'm talking about and there seems to always be a big difference between North Philly and wherever else anyone's talking about

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It feels so good to hear that there are actually people in Phila who actually believe that immigration is the only way to save this city. :clapping:
West Phila seems to have more Caribbeans, but I'd like to see more Caribbeans, typically more in Lawndale, Olney, Crecentville, and Frankford areas nearby North Phila and the NE Phila. Especially if a lot of Trinidadians can come, too, because I don't see too many in this city, to be honest. I have a lot of peoples who are from Trinidad, by the way. The differences between West Indians/Africans and African-Americans has always been pretty ugly between the two. Sure, we have the same roots, with AfAms mixing with native Americans and whites and the same for West Indians, especially in Trinidad. And the fact that both West Indians and AfAms' ancestors were both slaves, but West Indians were given a chance to better themselves by education, business, entertainment, sports, etc, and this was in the early 1800's, when slavery ended in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the rest of the British colonies in the Caribbean.
A lot of AfAms, despite being "freed" in 1865, still had to go through a nasty mixture of discrimincration, segregation, and racism. They were never given the choice to go to whatever schools they wanted, which explains why we have black colleges, and most of the blacks never got proper training, and resulted in working in lower-level jobs for a long time, while whites and other races were easily able to assimilate into American society and become "white", like the Irish, the Jews, the Italians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Puerto Ricans, etc.
As for the immigration problem, one thing that I never mentioned is the fact that it has been a problem since the 19th century, when we were no longer the cultural center of America, but a growing metroplis called New York was taking away that title. We still could've competed with them, but the big companies didn't do anything to get new steamboats and to get a faster fleet, and this not only affected our workforce back then, but continues to affect us right now. Which is why we have no real Greek community, no Swedish community, no Czech community, etc, because most of the big companies claimed they couldn't afford to fix the ships, and Phila couldn't reap the benefits that NYC, Boston, Chicago, DC, LA, SF, and Houston have, and are now currently benefitting.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/n...l/11009447.htm

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