More immigrants are putting down roots in southern and eastern Brooklyn, and nearly half of all New Yorkers speak a different language other than English at home, according to a new report from the city.
New York City’s immigrant population remained steady at 3.1 million between 2013 and 2023, with new neighborhood hubs emerging across the five boroughs and the city’s foreign-born population continuing to grow more diverse, according to the report The Newsest New Yorkers from the Department of City Planning.
Immigrants continue to drive New York City’s culture and economy, with foreign-born New Yorkers making up more than one-third of the city’s population and 43% of its workforce. Two-thirds of all city residents are first or second-generation New Yorkers, the report said.
After decades as the second-largest foreign-born group, China joined the Dominican Republic as tied for the largest foreign-born group in the city, followed by Jamaica, Mexico, Ecuador, Guyana, Bangladesh, Colombia, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Ukraine, and India.
“The story of New York City is one of immigration, and the contributions of our immigrant communities are woven into the fabric of our daily life," Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Faiza N. Ali said in a statement.
Brooklyn was home to 932,700 immigrant residents, who accounted for 35% of the borough’s total population. It had the second-largest immigrant population among the boroughs, surpassed only by Queens.
Asia and the non-Hispanic Caribbean were the top areas of origin among Brooklyn’s immigrants, together accounting for over one-half of the borough’s foreign-born residents, 29% and 27%, respectively. Immigrants from Latin America and Europe each comprised 19% of the foreign-born, while those born in Africa had a smaller presence in Brooklyn, accounting for just 4% of immigrants.
China was the leading country of origin among Brooklyn’s immigrant population, with 128,900 residents, more than twice the number from Jamaica, the next largest source, at 62,900. Dominican, Haitian, and Ukrainian immigrants each comprised at least 5% of Brooklyn’s foreign-born population or more than 47,000 residents per country. Immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Mexico also had sizable communities in Brooklyn, each accounting for about 4% of the borough’s foreign-born, or approximately 40,000 residents.
“This detailed report affirms a fundamental fact of life in New York City: immigrant communities are central to who we are and how we grow,” said Sideya Sherman, Director of the Department of City Planning.
Several Brooklyn neighborhoods were major immigrant hubs with foreign-born populations above 50,000. These included East Flatbush in central Brooklyn (74,600), Gravesend and Bensonhurst in southern Brooklyn (68,600 and 54,500, respectively), as well as Sunset Park in western Brooklyn (59,500).
Immigrants were more than 47% of the population in both East Flatbush and Sunset Park, and they comprised a majority in both Gravesend and Bensonhurst. Some of the smaller neighborhoods of southern Brooklyn also had immigrant majorities or near majorities, most notably Brighton Beach where immigrants made up a staggering 71% of all residents, the most of any neighborhood in the city. East New York, though not historically a major immigrant hub, had a foreign-born population close to 50,000, reflecting growth over the prior decade, the report said.
“Immigrant New Yorkers are writing the future of this city every day," Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. "From the neighborhoods they have built to the small businesses that have opened, from the languages they speak to the communities they sustain, immigrants make New York the city that it is."
