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Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2019–2023
five-year estimates, table B05006 (place of birth for the foreign-born population), tabulated at
census-tract level and aggregated to the Department of City Planning's 2020 Neighborhood
Tabulation Areas — the same geography behind
NYC Population FactFinder .
About the data
What are the five views?
Top birthplace colors each neighborhood by the country where the most of its
foreign-born residents were born. Signature asks a different question — not who is
biggest here, but who is unusually concentrated here compared to the rest of the city;
that's the view that finds Little Thailand in Elmhurst and the Bukharian corridor in Forest
Hills. Mosaic paints every census tract with the blend of its immigrant residents'
world regions — the closest view of block-scale mixing. Dots draws every immigrant
population as one dot per 250 people, placed at random within their census tract.
By country traces any of 123 birthplaces or 19 regions.
Where do “median age” and “median arrival” come from?
From the census's microdata sample (ACS PUMS 2019–2023) — individual anonymized
questionnaires for New York City, weighted — rather than the neighborhood tables behind the
map. They're shown only for countries with enough sampled people to be stable, and only
citywide: the microdata never places anyone below community-district scale, which is why
these figures don't change as you move around the map — except the neighborhood panel's
district row, which shows the same statistics for that neighborhood's community district
(named in the row) where the sample allows. They come from a different slice of
the same survey than the counts do, so the two won't reconcile to the person.
What is this counting — and how is it different from an ancestry map?
Only people actually born abroad: the immigrants themselves, as they reported their country
of birth to the American Community Survey.
What are the neighborhood shapes?
Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (NTAs): the Department of City Planning's grouping of the
city's 2,327 census tracts into named areas of roughly 15,000–50,000 people — small enough to
mean something, large enough for reliable survey estimates.
NTA boundaries are built from tract
math, not lived experience, so they sometimes split what people consider one neighborhood —
that's why there's a “Bushwick (West)” and a “Bushwick (East)”, and why the city's Newest New
Yorkers report merges the 197 residential NTAs into 164 more relatable combinations.
How reliable are the numbers?
They are survey estimates with sampling error. Margins of error were combined across tracts
(root sum of squares, which ignores tract covariance — the same simplification the city's own
reports use); estimates flagged “use with caution” have a coefficient of variation of 12–40%,
and “unreliable” above 40%. Reliability flags describe the counts; derived ratios like “×
citywide” carry additional uncertainty of their own, which is why multiples on shakier
estimates are shown as “≈”.
England, Scotland and the rest of the UK are combined; “China”
excludes Hong Kong and Taiwan, which are tabulated separately; “Korea” is North and South
tabulated together. The census's residual write-in lines (“West Indies”, “Other …”) are counted
in totals but never treated as countries. Parks, airports and cemeteries are left uncolored.
Why does the city's own report say Chinese immigrants are now the largest group?
The Newest New
Yorkers 2026 headline — Chinese immigrants (397,249) overtaking Dominicans (389,779) — uses
single-year 2023 estimates and counts “China, Total”, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. This
map uses the steadier 2019–2023 five-year average, on which the Dominican Republic (402,337)
still leads, and lists Hong Kong (34,352) and Taiwan (20,837) separately, as the underlying
census table does; combined with mainland China they total 392,910 here — the same neck-and-neck
story on a slightly earlier clock. (The report aggregates the same census tracts into the same
neighborhood areas used on this map.)
Are the newest arrivals (2022–24) included?
Undercounted. The Census Bureau later revised New York City's mid-2023 population upward by
roughly 133,000 — largely asylum seekers — but that correction is not reflected in the 2023
ACS, and the 2019–2023 five-year average used here dilutes the recent influx further. The
city's newest communities are larger than this map shows.
What does “signature group” mean?
The home country most over-represented in a neighborhood relative to its share of the
whole city — a location quotient, the same math search engines use to find the words that
distinguish a document. 3× means a group is three times as concentrated there as its citywide
norm. That lets a small group stand out — Uzbekistan-born Bukharians light up Forest Hills —
while a very large one, like Dominican New Yorkers, registers only where it is genuinely
concentrated, not everywhere it is merely numerous.
Note what this measures: distinctiveness,
not size — a group at just 1–2% of a neighborhood's residents can be its signature when that is
many times the group's citywide share. That is equally how Little
Sri Lanka registers on Staten Island and how British or Australian expats register in
brownstone Brooklyn; the map reports both and lets you judge.
Signature picks
require at least 400 people and a usable margin of error; when a runner-up falls inside the
winner's margin, the map declares a statistical tie rather than picking one. All “× citywide”
figures on this map — including the enclave pins — compare shares of all residents :
“10×” means roughly “2% of this neighborhood was born there, vs 0.2% of the city.” The thresholds (400 people,
3×, CV ≤ 40%) are fixed judgment calls set before looking at results, not parameters tuned to
the data. The “few missing enclaves” pins are examples, not an exhaustive sweep. The “Former
USSR” group is approximate: the census gives no separate line for Estonia, Turkmenistan,
Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan.
How are the Passport pins graded?
Each official enclave dot is colored by a fixed rule applied to its neighborhood
catchment.
● Strongly supported: the group runs at least 5× its citywide rate (or
makes up over a fifth of all residents), is at least 5% of residents, and the estimate is
tight (CV ≤ 10%).
✕ Weak or legacy: the group is below 2× its citywide rate there
today.
◐ Supported, with caveats: everything in between — plus any enclave the census
cannot measure directly (there is no “Palestine” or “Tibet” birth-country line, so those are
graded on proxies and capped here).
The grade describes what the ACS can see about who lives
there, not a neighborhood's history or its commercial life — Koreatown can be the center of
Korean New York's night out and still house few Korea-born residents.