In 2000, New York City was home to 81,408 individuals who were born in Russia, who made up 2.8 percent of the city’s total foreign-born population of 2,871,032. Russian immigrants were the 10th largest immigrant group in the city in 2000.
Russian Immigration Timeline on Dipity.
The first Russian immigrants arrived on American shores in 1747, although these early migrants tended not to be permanent settlers. The first major wave of Russian immigrants to New York City started in the early 1880s and was the result of political and social unrest in what are now known as the former Soviet Republics. A new wave of migration from Russia, consisting primarily of refugees fleeing communism and religious persecution, started arriving in New York City in the last quarter of the 20th century.
According to the U.S Census Bureau, Russian immigrants accounted for 2.8 percent of New York City’s foreign-born population in 2000. Among the European sources countries, Russia sends the largest number of immigrants to New York City, followed by Italy (2.5 percent) and the Ukraine (2.4 percent). Although Russian immigrants constitute only a small percentage of the city’s foreign-born population, it is good to remember that New York City has a highly diverse immigrant population where no one country of origin dominates the foreign-born population.
On average, a total of 3,034 foreign-born Russians moved to New York City each year during the 1990-1999 period. Of those, 75 percent entered the United States as refugees, fleeing political and religious persecution in their home country. The second largest group—9.5 percent—entered the country with diversity visas. Since the 1980s, the U.S. government has made several attempts to diversify the sources of immigrants. Russian immigrants in New York City have clearly taken advantage of these so-called “diversity visas.”
The Russian foreign born have the largest presence in Brooklyn, with more than half of them settling disproportionately there. Gravesend-Homecrest and Sheepshead Bay-Brighton Beach are the two most popular neighborhoods where Russian immigrants and their families had settled in 2000. Nearly 25 percent of the Russian-born population resided in those two Brooklyn neighborhoods alone. Eight of the top ten neighborhoods of Russian settlement are found in Brooklyn and a total of 64 percent of Russian immigrants live in that borough.
The commonly-held belief that immigrants are not educated or lack skills is not necessarily true, as shown by the bar graph above. Although almost 60 percent of foreign-born Russians aged five and over in New York City in 2000 were not fluent in English, a relatively small percentage (14.6 percent) had not complete high school. Overall, the foreign-born Russians had the second lowest incidence (after immigrants from the Philippines) of not completing high school among all immigrant groups in the city. However, 45.6 percent of foreign-born Russians in New York City had college or higher degrees, which is higher than the 31.1 percent of native-born New Yorkers for whom that was the case.
It is also worthwhile to note that, in 2000, large percentages of foreign-born Russians aged 16 and over, both male (43 percent) and female (39 percent), worked in managerial and professional occupations that tend to require college degrees. The second most prevalent type of job held by Russian-born females was in the sales and office category (27 percent), whereas production, transportation, and material moving (24 percent) was the second most prevalent employment category for foreign-born Russian men. For foreign-born Russian females, the smallest percentage worked in construction, extraction, and maintenance (1 percent). For Russian-born males, in contrast, that was in farming, fishing, and forestry (1 percent).
Sources
Lobo, Arun Peter, and Joseph J. Salvo. 2004. The Newest New Yorkers, 2000: Immigrant New York in the New Millennium. New York: New York City Department of City Planning, Population Division.
“Fall of the Soviet Union.” The Cold War Museum. N.p., n.d. Last accessed May 19, 2011.
“Russian Immigrants.” Spartacus Educational. N.p., n.d. Last accessed May 19, 2011.
“1917 Russian Revolution.” St-Petersburg-Life.com. Lifeboat Limited, n.d. Last accessed May 19, 2011.
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