page_title: Caribbean immigration to New York City
section_title: Puerto Ricans
hierarchical_section_title: Caribbean immigration to New York City / Hispanic / Puerto Ricans
caption_attribution_description: English: Author: Angelo Falcon
context_page_description: Caribbean immigration to New York City has been prevalent since the late 1800s and the early 1900s. This immigration wave has seen large numbers of people from Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago, among others, come to New York City in the 20th and 21st centuries.
context_section_description: Puerto Ricans are Americans citizens by birth, so they are not immigrants.
  New York City has the largest Puerto Rican population outside of Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans, due to the forced change of the citizenship status of the island's residents, can technically be said to have come to the City first as immigrants and subsequently as migrants. The first group of Puerto Ricans moved to New York in the mid-19th century, when Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony and its people Spanish subjects. The following wave of Puerto Ricans to move to New York did so after the Spanish–American War of 1898 made Puerto Rico a U.S. possession and after the Jones–Shafroth Act of 1917 gave Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, which allows travel without the need of a passport between the island and the United States mainland. The largest wave of migration came in the 1950s, in what became known as "The Great Migration"; as a result, more than a million Puerto Ricans once called New York City home. Presently the Puerto Rican population is around 800,000.
  Puerto Ricans have historically lived in neighborhoods such as the Lower East Side (also known in the community as Loisaida), Spanish Harlem and Williamsburg, Brooklyn since the 1950s. There are large Puerto Rican populations throughout the 5 boroughs, with the Bronx having the largest. Currently, Bushwick and several South Bronx neighborhoods, such as Soundview, have some of the largest numbers of Puerto Ricans in the city. However, there has been an increase in Puerto Ricans in outlying areas of the city, such as the North Shore of Staten Island, and the eastern Bronx.
caption: The 2005 National Puerto Rican Parade.
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