The Importance of Immigrant Political Participation in New York City

New York City is one of the planet’s most important places in economic, cultural, and political terms. It is home to 8.4 million people and workplace for 3.6 million (even in the face of COVID-19-driven employment declines), who produce a GDP of $884 trillion, about 4.1 percent of the national total. Its current municipal budget is $88.2 billion (€73.2 billion), with other levels of government also spending substantial amounts within the city. If it were an independent nation, it would rank 100 th in size, larger than Switzerland, Israel, Norway, or Denmark, and not far behind Austria or Hungary. Taking the larger metropolitan area (of approximately 23.7 million residents) into account, it would rank globally in 56 th position, alongside Taiwan and just behind Australia, and account for 10 percent of the U.S. GDP, alongside that of Canada. A crucial aspect of life in the city is the import roles immigrant-origin constituencies play in the fabric of its labor force, commercial enterprises, cultural and nonprofit activities – and its politics and government. With legal immigrants having relatively easy access to citizenship and their children enjoying birthright citizenship regardless of their immigrant parents’ legal status, first- and second-generation immigrants not only make up three out of every five city residents, but just over half its voting age citizens, who are eligible to vote in local, state, and federal elections. Native-stock, non-Hispanic whites account for only one in five city residents and one in four potential voters. So, New York City is far past the point of demographic inversion that has created so much political anxieties among native white populations in so many settings. It probably has a larger immigrant-origin component to its electorate than all but a few other places on the globe, such as Los Angeles or Miami, and far larger than in any European urban setting. What has the new immigrant and minority majority in the city’s electorate meant for the city’s politics and governmental policies and practices? What does the case of New York City teach us about the meaning not just of the political incorporation, but the potential political empowerment, of immigrant constituencies? What implications does the growing electoral and political influence of immigrant constituencies have for advancing public policies designed to reduce inequality, include marginalized communities, achieve democracy in the face of racial and ethnic fragmentation, and reconcile the competing interests of native- born and immigrant constituencies? This paper begins to address these questions by noting three features of the transition in political demography that attenuate the potential for deep inter-group conflict and shift it toward managed competition instead: the great diversity of ethno-racial groups that has emerged, the consequent necessity of cross-group coalition building needed to create electoral majorities (in the context of a one-party political system), and the resulting ambiguous tension between the group identity politics needed to mobilize constituencies and the boundary-crossing and boundary-blurring strategies needed to build power across ethnic groups.