The role
of international immigration for our area is something I have recently been
posting about. Like the country as a whole, our communities have long been
refuges for those seeking a change in their lives as they left their loved ones, their homes
and their cultures to seek a new beginning in a foreign land.
The
percentage of our regional population that was foreign born reached its peak in
the early part of the 1900s. Around 1920 nearly 50,000 people who lived in
Herkimer and Oneida Counties had been born in another country. From that decade
through 1990, the area saw a continuing decline of foreign immigrants – in
1990 only around 10,000 people living here had been born abroad. The percent of population that was foreign
born went from nearly 20% in 1920 to less than 5% by 1990.
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European
immigration had long fueled our area with new community members. From the turn
of the last century through the first decade of this one, people emigrating from
the “old Continent” to our region have made up the majority of those settling
in Herkimer and Oneida Counties. In 1900 more than 31,000 residents were
foreign born, and 90% of them came here from Europe. In particular, the vast majority of foreign
born Europeans living here in 1900 came from the northern and western countries
of the continent: places like England, Ireland, France and Germany were typical
“motherlands”. Of note is that many immigrants
in the area also called Italy, a part of Southern Europe, home.
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This
flow of people mainly from the Northern and Western European countries has
changed in the last 100 years however. No longer are those regions contributing
nearly what they once had. While Europe as a continent still is where more than
40% of our foreign born population comes from, it is no longer dominated by
countries in the north and west; former residents of countries like Ukraine,
Bosnia and Belarus now make up more than 70% of the Eastern Europeans that have recently migrated from that continent. So there
has been both a decline in the number and percentage of Europeans immigrating
to our region, as well as a change in what countries those Europeans are
originating from as they have make their way to Herkimer and Oneida Counties.
If
European immigration is only currently accounting for around 40% of our foreign born population,
where is the rest coming from? In the past, the small percentage of non-European immigrants came from places
like Canada; in the last decade, what we now see is considerable immigration
from south of our border, as well as from the west,
in Asia.
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In 2000
more than one in ten (12%) foreign born residents came from the Caribbean,
Central America, or South America. By 2010, that percentage had climbed to
around 18%. Even more noteworthy, one in five (20%) foreign born people
in the region were from Asia according to the 2000 Census. In 2010, a full
third (33%) of immigrants were of Asian heritage. Combined then, more than half of the foreign
born members of our communities are now from somewhere other than Europe – versus
100 years ago when 90% of international
immigrants came from there.
International migration in our region has changed considerably in the last 100 years then. We have gone from having a very Euro-centric foreign born immigrant population to one that is much more blended with Latin American, South American, Mexican and Asian cultures all competing to become the next versions of our region's proud Italian, Polish, German and other successful ethnic communities.
