Wave of immigrants hits Northeast
Mexicans are fastest-growing group in region
By Erin Texeira
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 1, 2005
NEWBURGH, N.Y. – Sunday morning in this small Hudson Valley city: More than 1,000 parishioners, most from Mexico, pack Spanish-language Masses at St. Patrick's Catholic Church. Afterward many families flock to El Azteca for its authentic tacos.
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It's the same story elsewhere in the Northeast. Like the other parts of the country before it, the region is finally starting to see the impact of Mexican migration. New communities of Mexicans have arrived to fill farm, construction and domestic jobs, government data show. Population growth in states such as Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut would be considerably slower if not for the newcomers, who are steadily bringing about the region's biggest demographic shift in generations.
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Sixty miles north of New York City, Newburgh has historically had a small Puerto Rican community. But these days Mexicans drawn to farm work in local apple orchards, dairy farms and factories far outnumber Puerto Ricans, demographers say.
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In the early 1990s, he said, California's ailing economy and rising anti-immigrant sentiments pushed some Mexican immigrants into new places with abundant jobs such as North Carolina, Georgia and New York City. As new immigrants kept arriving – peaking at more than 600,000 a year around 1999 or 2000 – many joined friends or family resettled in the new areas. Tens of thousands went straight from the Mexican state of Michoacan to meatpacking jobs in Tar Heel, N.C., and from Puebla to work in restaurants and private homes in Manhattan.
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