In his opening remarks at LISC/Chicago‘s “Back to the Future” panel last week, Raul Raymundo of The Resurrection Project focused on the role of immigrants in Chicago’s neighborhoods and economy. Without the surge of immigration Chicago experienced in the past two decades, the city could have ended up resembling Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit, Raymundo says.
I would conjecture that it was primarily the wave of GENTRIFICATION that has kept Chicago from ending up like Detroit or Cleveland.
Chicago is also one of the country’s main business centers due to it’s centralized location. Immigrants tend to go where the jobs are. Unless you’re from the Middle East and have a number of relatives or feel more comfortable in a large community of Middle Eastern ethnicity, chances are you’re not headed to Detroit. Chicago also never lost that base of middle & upper middle class residents in the downtown area, even in the worst of times. Thus it never had the wholesale exodus to the suburbs that Detroit & Cleveland had.
Keeping the professional class has been nice and all, but Chicago’s population gain in the 90’s was largely due to immigration.
We’ll see what happens this decade
You need a history lesson, tup.
Chicago’s middle- and upper-middle classs population base was devastated prior to its rebirth beginning in the 60s. Downtown – as we understand the term today – population was minimal prior to the 60s. Check out the census numbers.
Prior to the 60s and 70s Old Town had become a slum. River North, the West and South Loops, Streeterville and the Loop didn’t exist as residential neighborhoods. Lincoln Park, which is not typically considered part of downtown, was close to slum conditions. Much of it was declared a “slum and blighted area” for urban renewal purposes.
The city lost 600,000 more people over time than lived in Cleveland at that city’s peak (1.5M vs 900k, round numbers). I’ll let you check Detroit – it’s not a place I want to think about.
Yeah Joe, that’s kind of obvious.
But I stand by my point that Chicago’s population gain in the 90’s can largely be attributed to Hispanic migration. Care to dispute that?
Didn’t think so.
tup,
You’ve made two claims – generic “immigration” and “Hispanic migration.”
Which one am I supposed to respond to?
Joe, I can go ahead and say “Immigration” but we both know that the vast, vast majority of that has been from Hispanic countries, especially Mexico.
I don’t know any such thing, tup.
You may be right, but I’d want to see the data.
Well, tup, I just got around to looking at the 2000 Census data.
56.3% of the foreign-born population of Chicago was from Latin America. The data’s not reported in a readily accessible place at any finer level. 1990 data is not available for this category of info.
Is 56.3% a “vast, vast majority” to your way of thinking?
To be honest, that indeed is very surprising.
No, that was not what I was expecting.
Just curious, do you have a link, or can you provide a breakdown of what countries they all came from? This should be very interesting (and eye-opening)
The only data I can find for foreign-born is reported on a regional rather than country of origin basis.
The next highest points or origin for foreign-born Chicagoans are Europe and Asia.
The majority of the immigrants are mexican ILLEGAL ALIENS who have a high birthrate and high poverty and low educational/skills. They take advantage of the generous welfare and social programs/SCHOOLS/hospitals. They haven’t saved us from becoming detroit, they will cause us to become like detroit. All one has to do is look at the damage they have done to california.
This is a state that is billions of dollars in debt , it is irresponsible of anyone to promote anymore illegals who bring more crime and poverty.
What saves us from being detroit is the diverse industries, and middle class producers who are a strond reliable tax base. We don’t need anymore people who are sitting in the cart, we need more people pushing the cart.
(economics 101).
We also need fewer ill-informed haters, futuredoc.
Sorry to see you back.
I don’t know what’s sadder–the fact that he has such hatred, or the fact that he will apparently be joining my profession.
Haters is something one finds in all grops. The no se vende crowd in the old traditional hispanic neighborhoods that are undergoing gentrification are no better.
CaptainVideo,
As I travel around Chicago I regularly encounter Latino-on-white and black-on-white hatred. If the comments on our YouTube videos are any index, those forms of hatred are pervasive, ugly and virulent. I delete almost all of the comments on our videos from black and Latino neighborhoods – they’re too vile and profane to contemplate. Here’s a sample of what I’ve left up, a comment on a Pilsen video:
on a positive note regarding immigrants:
http://forgottenchicago.com/features/chicago-areas/holiday-in-avondale/
joe zekas, u must be aware of the fact that individuals who say those kind of things on youtube are the last person you have to be afraid of.
by the way joe, ive only been to chicago a couple times, but my impression is that too many suburbs have been built. i dont care about numbers or what somebody throws out there, its not good for the auora of the city. its hard to put into words, im only saying the suburbs have been expanded a little too much
Mike, last I checked most of American cities’ suburbs have “expanded too much”. What a strange comment
im talkin about the idea of ‘chicagoland’ and my point was about black on white and latin on white ‘hate’ on youtube pages. its the same thing as callin someobody’s home and making threats. those ppl would faint if you were in the same room with them
Uh, no, Mike. You’d be the one fainting if you were in the same room with some of our YouTube commenters.
How do I know that? Some of them have videos of themselves up on their channels.
Note that I also mentioned face time on the streets of Chicago with some of the less-than-friendly types.
i will not be fainting anytime soon joe zekas. i am schizophrenic and it isnt even physiologically possible for me to do that anymore. you see? you really do have to be crazy to visit your website