Post by Jaga on Sept 21, 2008 21:18:31 GMT -7
Poles return back to Poland. The Polish immigration to America is simply shrinking!
read it here:
For 19 years, Elizabeth Baumgartner, a Polish-American from Queens, has been publishing a series of how-to books aimed at newly arrived Polish immigrants trying to find their way in the United States. The books cover topics like buying a house, investing in mutual funds and starting your own business.
These days, however, her best sellers are guides to a once-familiar place, Poland, with titles like “Returning to Poland” and “Retirement of a Re-Immigrant in Poland.”
“This is a sad trend for me,” Ms. Baumgartner said.
New York’s Polish community is shrinking, as waves of immigrants and their families are being lured back to Poland by a vibrant economy there.
Tighter immigration enforcement, gentrification and the overall aging of the Polish population have contributed to the decline. But the biggest catalyst, community leaders say, was Poland’s admission to the European Union in 2004, which created immense employment opportunities for Poles in Europe and spurred a return migration.
At the same time, the influx of new Polish immigrants to New York has slowed to a trickle, these community leaders say. As a result, the population of Polish-born people in New York declined to 60,153 in 2006, down from 65,246 in 2000, a 7.8 percent drop, according to the Department of City Planning. During the same span, the number of New Yorkers claiming Polish ancestry fell to 211,389 from 213,447.
The erosion has been felt most deeply in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where Poles have been migrating for decades. Polish businesses are losing customers and closing down. Polish employers are struggling to find Polish-speaking workers. The sale of one-way tickets for flights from New York to Poland is soaring.
Tomasz Deptula, an editor and columnist at Nowy Dziennik (The Polish Daily News), the oldest of three Polish-language dailies published in New York, said that unlike the rest of the city’s ethnic media, which is robust, his paper’s advertising revenues and circulation numbers have fallen precipitously in recent years, forcing staffing cuts.
“It’s a rather sad story, especially from my point of view,” he said. “I’m feeling like I’m facing extinction.”
Even before the migration back to Poland began, the Polish community in Greenpoint was fracturing under the pressure of gentrification, which drove up property values. Young families, new immigrants and those of modest means have in turn settled in nascent Polish communities in the city, including Maspeth and Ridgewood in Queens, and Borough Park in Brooklyn, while others have moved out of the state.
But Poland’s admission to the European Union sharply accelerated that trend, business owners and residents say. They note that the momentum has increased as the dollar has weakened against the Polish zloty, the American economy has faltered and the United States has been more aggressive in enforcing immigration rules. (Similar reverse migrations have occurred recently among other New York immigrant populations whose homeland economies have improved, like Brazil and Ireland.)
Meanwhile, many Poles, particularly young people who once might have considered coming to the states after high school or college, have decided instead to stay in Poland or get work in Dublin, London or other booming European cities. The euro is robust, they argue, and home is never more than a cheap two-hour flight away.
LOT Polish Airlines, Poland’s largest carrier, is carrying more passengers from New York to Poland than in the opposite direction, said Andrzej Kozlowski, a media relations officer for the airline in Warsaw. “The trend here is clear and the gap is widening,” he wrote in an e-mail message.
...
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21poles.html?ref=nyregion
read it here:
For 19 years, Elizabeth Baumgartner, a Polish-American from Queens, has been publishing a series of how-to books aimed at newly arrived Polish immigrants trying to find their way in the United States. The books cover topics like buying a house, investing in mutual funds and starting your own business.
These days, however, her best sellers are guides to a once-familiar place, Poland, with titles like “Returning to Poland” and “Retirement of a Re-Immigrant in Poland.”
“This is a sad trend for me,” Ms. Baumgartner said.
New York’s Polish community is shrinking, as waves of immigrants and their families are being lured back to Poland by a vibrant economy there.
Tighter immigration enforcement, gentrification and the overall aging of the Polish population have contributed to the decline. But the biggest catalyst, community leaders say, was Poland’s admission to the European Union in 2004, which created immense employment opportunities for Poles in Europe and spurred a return migration.
At the same time, the influx of new Polish immigrants to New York has slowed to a trickle, these community leaders say. As a result, the population of Polish-born people in New York declined to 60,153 in 2006, down from 65,246 in 2000, a 7.8 percent drop, according to the Department of City Planning. During the same span, the number of New Yorkers claiming Polish ancestry fell to 211,389 from 213,447.
The erosion has been felt most deeply in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where Poles have been migrating for decades. Polish businesses are losing customers and closing down. Polish employers are struggling to find Polish-speaking workers. The sale of one-way tickets for flights from New York to Poland is soaring.
Tomasz Deptula, an editor and columnist at Nowy Dziennik (The Polish Daily News), the oldest of three Polish-language dailies published in New York, said that unlike the rest of the city’s ethnic media, which is robust, his paper’s advertising revenues and circulation numbers have fallen precipitously in recent years, forcing staffing cuts.
“It’s a rather sad story, especially from my point of view,” he said. “I’m feeling like I’m facing extinction.”
Even before the migration back to Poland began, the Polish community in Greenpoint was fracturing under the pressure of gentrification, which drove up property values. Young families, new immigrants and those of modest means have in turn settled in nascent Polish communities in the city, including Maspeth and Ridgewood in Queens, and Borough Park in Brooklyn, while others have moved out of the state.
But Poland’s admission to the European Union sharply accelerated that trend, business owners and residents say. They note that the momentum has increased as the dollar has weakened against the Polish zloty, the American economy has faltered and the United States has been more aggressive in enforcing immigration rules. (Similar reverse migrations have occurred recently among other New York immigrant populations whose homeland economies have improved, like Brazil and Ireland.)
Meanwhile, many Poles, particularly young people who once might have considered coming to the states after high school or college, have decided instead to stay in Poland or get work in Dublin, London or other booming European cities. The euro is robust, they argue, and home is never more than a cheap two-hour flight away.
LOT Polish Airlines, Poland’s largest carrier, is carrying more passengers from New York to Poland than in the opposite direction, said Andrzej Kozlowski, a media relations officer for the airline in Warsaw. “The trend here is clear and the gap is widening,” he wrote in an e-mail message.
...
www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/nyregion/21poles.html?ref=nyregion
