International Journal of Business and Social Science Vol. 6, No. 2; February 2015 150 Irish Relocation and Recent Immigration in New York City Nicoleta Stanca Ovidius University, Constanța Faculty of Letters Aleea Universității, Nr. 1 Constanța, România Abstract Until WWII, New York was an Irish city, with the “political machine” of the Tammany Hall, the heads of the church, police and fire departments and schooling, all Irish-controlled. After 1945, the Irish domination declined because of less immigration and suburbanization in the US. This article will discuss the changes in the “traditional” Irish neighbourhood, such as Washington Heights and Inwood, NYC, where the Irish have begun to define themselves in relation to the numerous blacks and Latinos moving in the area. Secondly, it will present a typology of “new” Irish immigrants in NYC, since the 1980s. In spite of the tensions between the undocumented workers and the highly skilled ones or between the first-generation and the recent Irish immigrants, the latter have helped reviving the Irish neighbourhood in NYC politically, economically and culturally. Keywords: Irish Americans, New York, immigration, relocation, identity, generations I. The Relevance of New York Irish Americans’ Story Until WWII, New York used to be an Irish city, with Irish mayors, people in the fire and police departments and leading figures in the church hierarchy. However, the drop in the Irish population of New York, first and second generation, was substantial after 1945; in the 1980s, only 42.000 New Yorkers were Irish born of the third, fourth and fifth generation, which meant less than 10% of the city’s seven million population. With better transportation, better and more jobs and a house boom and the desire to escape the neighbourhood of Blacks and Hispanics, the more affluent and upwardly mobile Irish Americans moved to the suburbs of New York and New Jersey. According to the 1990 Census, twice as many Irish Americans lived in New York’s Rockland, Westchester and on Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk, than in the city. And those who lived in the city moved from Lower Manhattan to Upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. By the 1970s, Queens contained the largest number of Irish Americans and Brooklyn was the second. Manhattan contained less Irish population and so, in 1991, Mattie Haskins Shamrock imports on East 75 St. closed its doors after 68 years to be replaced by a Mexican restaurant (Reimers, 1997). In spite of these declining statistics, the story of the New York Irish continues to be of relevance for the Irish people, for America and for the world. In the 1980s, 1 in 7 Americans claimed Irish ancestors (through Irish names, such as John McGraw of the Giants, Frank O’Hara, the writer, Mike Quill, head of the Transport Workers Union). In 1953, Robert F. Wagner was the last Irish American mayor of New York. In the fire departments in New York in the 1990s, there was still a solid representation. The Catholic Church in New York has left a legacy of welfare organizations (schools, charities, parishes, hospitals), carried over by Archbishop John O’Connor in 1984. And if today there are fewer policemen in New York who have Irish names, there are more stockbrokers that do. The police commissioner is no longer Robert J. McGuire, but the chairman of New York Stock Exchange is John J. Phelan Jr. (New York Times, August 1, 1986, in Reimers, 1997). The Irish in New York have historically stood for Irish America through various institutions, such as the Tammany Hall, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the 5 th Avenue parade, the Irish American publishing – with magazines, such as The Irish World, The Irish Echo, the New York Irish History Roundtable, the Irish Arts Centre, the Pipes and Drums Band of the New York City Fire Department (Reimers, 1997).