Nancy Foner compares tenements of the past and the apartments of today to unfold a story of the past waves of immigrants to the most recent. She points out that the current trend that differs from the past is that the suburban, outer lying boroughs are now becoming the first destination of immigrants rather than Manhattan. In the past, the four boroughs were underdeveloped and was an impractical location for immigrants to live because they nature of their work at the available transportation at the time required them and their family to live near their potential jobs.

My parents took the route much like the older immigration wave. They first moved into an apartment in Roosevelt Island, close to the city, and close to their jobs. However the biggest change and the one that has caused the shift in ethnic clusters, was the NYC’s metro system. After my parents became accustomed to New York they were able to utilize the city’s transportation system, allowing them to move further away from their job and reside in a suburban Queens, which provided an appealing location to raise their family.

The immigrant settlement patterns have changed massively due to the implication of the subway system. An upgrade from cable cars and 6mph horses, the transportation system not only allowed access to outer borrows but also paved the way to let more and different immigrants to settle and create their own ethnic communities, much like the earlier waves but in different regions and of different ethnic backgrounds. It is startling to whiteness that despite the fact that more regions are available for new immigrants to settle in, those of similar ethnic descent still find a way to develop modern day ethnic districts.

-Trish Anne Roque