The Peru Gazette

Numbering 4.4 million, these newcomers make up 22 percent of the state’s population, placing the Empire State well above the national average of 13 percent and making it the nation’s second-largest destination behind California for new arrivals, according to a report released Wednesday by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. […] while New York City has long been known as a magnet, the report notes that immigrants have helped stabilize the population size of a number of struggling upstate cities, from Buffalo to Albany. In Schenectady, they make up 13.3 percent of approximately 66,000 residents. […] while the population overall dropped in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area, as well as in Syracuse and the Utica-Rome region, the drops would have been steeper if not for the immigrants coming to those locations. In many cases, immigration is filling the population gaps that would open when longtime residents move away, often to warmer, lower-tax locations like Florida. Immigrants include both those who have been recruited to work in the region’s growing tech sector such as in nanotechnology research or at the Global Foundries microchip plant, as well as refugees who in some cases bring little more than the clothing on their backs. Some old-line Catholic churches are being re-purposed for immigrant groups, and several new mosques have gone up in recent years.

Source: Report: Almost a quarter of New Yorkers are immigrants – Times Union