Lower East Side maincontent Museum

Did You Know:
Immigrant Labor

According to the Department of City Planning, immigrants comprised 43% of New York’s workforce in 2000. Experts predict major changes in New York’s economy over the next 25 years and many view immigrant labor as essential to continued growth. At present, over half of those employed in New York’s manufacturing and construction industries are foreign-born. According to the Center for an Urban Future, a non-partisan New York-based think tank, as aging baby-boomers near retirement and new jobs are created, immigrant workers will play an increasingly important role in maintaining the health of New York’s labor force.

Some experts believe that immigrants take job opportunities away from native-born Americans. According to George Borjas, Economist, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University:

“…When immigration increases the supply of workers in a skill category, the earnings of native-born workers in that same category fall. The negative effect will occur regardless of whether the immigrant workers are legal or illegal, temporary or permanent. Any sizable increase in the number of immigrants will inevitably lower wages for some American workers.”

Americans have long debated immigration’s impact on the economy. In 1882, widespread fears that Chinese immigrants posed a threat to the jobs of native-born, white workingman crystallized in the Chinese Exclusion Act. Read more about this debate in the Tenement Encyclopedia and at the end of this newsletter.

From The Archives:
Amorous Artifacts

The back of a ticket to a Thanksgiving Ball given by the Oralto Social Club at the Lenox Assembly Rooms, 252 Second Ave

The racy lyrics to “Take Your Girlie to the Movies, If You Can’t Make Love at Home,” appeared on the back of this ticket to a 1919 “Thanksgiving Ball.” Written in 1919 by Bert Kalmar and Edgar Leslie, the song hints at the role played by dance halls and early motion pictures in the creation of social spaces where young men and women could interact unaccompanied by parents or chaperones.

"Take your girlie to the movies,
If you can't make love at home.
There's no little brother there who always squeals,
You can say an awful lot in seven reels!

Take your lessons at the movies,
And have love scenes of your own!
When the picture's over and it's time to leave,
Don't forget to brush the powder off your sleeve!
Take your girlie to the movies,
If you can't make love at home!"

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In Fact

10 Million

Each year, the Queens-based company Delicias Andinas produces 10 million arepas, a traditional bread from Columbia. Delicias is a 16-employee company run by Columbian-born Manuel A. Miranda, one of the immigrant entrepreneurs who, according to a recent New York Times article, are reshaping the tastes and economy of New York and other parts of the country.

Join The Tenement on March 13 for our Annual Gala, which will celebrate Immigrants and Food.
>> More Information

On Our Website
The Lucky Calendar

The New York Book Club
Winter Calendar

February 15:

Crossing the BLVD

A theatrical performance and conversation inspired by the critically-acclaimed book about the new immigrants living in Queens.
>> Event details

“[Immigrants] are supplying a skill level that is much in demand. It doesn’t just seem that Americans don’t want to be hotel chambermaids, pick lettuce or repair roofs; it’s true. Most [Americans] are too educated for that kind of work. The added diversity, the complementariness of skills, that [immigrants] bring is good for the economy as a whole. They perform services that would otherwise be more expensive and in some cases simply unavailable.”
-- Roger Lowenstein, correspondent, New York Times, “The Immigration Equation,” July 9, 2006

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