The passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Amendments led to a surge in immigration to
New York City and a decline in the share of European
immigrants. Between 1970 and 2000, the total foreign-born population nearly doubled, from 1.44 million to 2.87 million, while the share of Europeans
dropped, from 64 percent to 19 percent. Latin
America was the largest area of origin in 2000,
accounting for nearly 32 percent of the city’s foreign-born, followed by Asia (24 percent), the
non-hispanic Caribbean (21 percent), Europe (19
percent), and Africa (3 percent). Thus, New York
City’s foreign-born in 2000 have extremely diverse
origins, in contrast to the overwhelming European
origin of the foreign-born in earlier decades.