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Chinese immigrants overtake Dominicans as NYC's largest foreign-born group
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Arun Venugopal
Published Jun 11, 2026
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By
Arun Venugopal
Published Jun 11, 2026
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New York City's Chinese population has surpassed the Dominican population in size, making it the largest immigrant group in the five boroughs for the first time, according to a new, once-in-a-decade report from the Department of City Planning.
The city’s Chinese population reached 397,000 in 2023, a 5% increase from 2013, while the Dominican population declined 6% to 390,000 over the same period, according to The Newest New Yorkers report. The two groups each make up 12.8% and 12.6% of the city’s 3.1 million immigrant population.
Dominicans had reigned as New York City’s largest foreign-born group since 1990. The city's Chinese population includes New Yorkers who moved here from mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to the report.
The data predates the arrival of the second Trump administration last year, during which the country has seen a historic decline in international migration. The findings underscore the dramatic shift in the city’s makeup since the late 20th century, when Europe and then Latin America sent the most immigrants to the United States. City officials said this was the first time in history that Asia had claimed the top spot.
“There are many people from China who covet the American dream and work hard to achieve it for themselves and their children,” said state Sen. John Liu, a Queens Democrat and the first Asian New Yorker to be elected to public office in the city. “It’s not a competition” between communities,” he added, noting the Chinese community’s growth has been gradual.
The 235-page report, which is crammed with demographic data, is instrumental in shaping the work of numerous city agencies and other service providers, and helps determine which immigrant groups receive funding for language access, healthcare and other services. City officials said the bulk of the data is drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys, through 2023.
The Department of City Planning has issued its decennial Newest New Yorkers report since 1990. But long before that, the city has taken note of the various immigrant groups that have come in sizable numbers and redefined New York City with their presence.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a statement that the report would help ensure “that every New Yorker — no matter where they were born — can build a future here.”
“Immigrant New Yorkers are writing the future of this city every day,” Mamdani said. “From the neighborhoods they have built to the small businesses that have opened, from the languages they speak to the communities they sustain, immigrants make New York the city that it is.”
Other key changes identified in the report:
- Queens continues to be the borough with the largest immigrant population, followed by Brooklyn, which lost 45,000 immigrant residents over the previous decade. The only borough to see a significant growth in its immigrant population was Staten Island.
- Flushing-Murray Hill boasts the city’s largest immigrant community, with nearly 96,000 foreign-born residents, two-thirds of the area’s overall population.
- In second place is East Flatbush, with nearly 75,000 immigrants, followed by Gravesend, Brooklyn, which has large numbers of residents from China, Ukraine, Russia and Uzbekistan.
- Some long-standing hubs of immigrant life in the city have lost foreign-born residents. These include Astoria, Queens, which has 11,000 fewer immigrants than it did a decade earlier, and Jackson Heights, which has lost 4,000 immigrants. Foreign-born populations have also declined in other long-established immigrant enclaves, including Washington Heights, Sunset Park and East Flatbush.
- At the same time, the report said new immigrant hubs have emerged in East New York, Brooklyn; Springfield Gardens and St. Albans in Queens; Grasmere and New Springville on Staten Island; and Westchester Square and Bedford Park in the Bronx.
Sideya Sherman, director of the Department of City Planning, said the report affirms that “immigrant communities are central to who we are and how we grow.”
“As we celebrate Immigrant Heritage Month, we recommit ourselves to planning for a fairer, more inclusive, and affordable city where all New Yorkers are welcomed, supported and able to thrive,” Sherman said.
For some Dominicans, however, the report affirmed the ongoing challenge of affordability and being able to remain in the city.
Diana Caba, the vice president for community and economic development at the Hispanic Federation, a national Latino nonprofit organization with headquarters in Manhattan, said “Nueva York” had long held a central place in the minds of Dominicans.
But high living costs had pushed members of the community to leave the five boroughs; in her own Dominican family’s case, she said, a number of relatives had left the city for Pennsylvania.
Dominican New Yorkers have a household median income of $36,000, according to The Newest New Yorkers report. An October 2025 report from the CUNY Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies stated that nearly 100,000 members of the community had moved out of the city between 2021 and 2023.
“It's becoming tougher and tougher to survive in the city,” said Caba.
In addition to steadily growing larger, Liu said, the city’s Chinese community had grown wealthier, and had a household median income of $60,000, according to the report. The community’s influence is felt across the corporate world, in arts and media, academia, and in government and politics, as well as restaurants that cater to working-class and upper-income New Yorkers alike, he said.
“Today, there are still many immigrants arriving to New York City from China, but we are now into large numbers of third- and fourth-generation Chinese Americans,” Liu said.
In 2023, the city's Chinese and Dominican populations shared the report's top rank, with a difference that was within 10,000 people.
John Mollenkopf, a professor of political science and sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, said an analysis of slightly more recent data, from 2024, “shows quite definitively that the foreign-born population from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan is now a good bit larger than the foreign-born population from the Dominican Republic” — a difference of 27,000, he said.
Various immigrant communities had fundamentally shaped New York City over the centuries, according to Mollenkopf. These included the German immigrants who arrived in the 19th century as well as the Jewish immigrants who came from Poland, Ukraine, Russia and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Many of this latter group were Yiddish-speaking and became a “huge force” in local politics and cultural affairs, he said, along with waves of immigrants from Italy.
“ The Chinese now are more or less on a par with some of those major immigrant groups,” Mollenkopf said.
Mollenkopf said he regularly analyzed city voter registration files, which indicated that four of the 10 most common voter surnames were Hispanic, with Rodriguez leading the list. In second place was Williams, he said, with Chen coming in third. Five of the top 30 voter surnames are Chinese, he said.
“The fact that Chen is the third most frequent surname in the voter file is indicative of the impact” of the Chinese community on New York City politics, he said. He expected this to only grow.
“It takes a while for an immigrant group to become citizens, and even after becoming citizens, it takes a while for them to learn about politics and get registered and get politically active and so forth,” Mollenkopf said. “But it's definitely going to be an increasing influence on city elections in years to come.”
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
Zohran Mamdani
immigrants
new york city
Arun Venugopal
Arun Venugopal is a senior reporter for the WNYC and Gothamist Race & Justice Unit who focuses on issues of race and bias in our region. His reporting also tackles the topics of immigration, faith, and inequality. Arun serves as the regular fill-in host of the station's "U.S. of Anxiety" program. Arun was the creator and host of Micropolis, a series about race and identity. He is a contributor to NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. He has appeared on PBS Newshour, On the Media and Studio 360, and has been published in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and Salon. He also frequently serves as an emcee and moderator of panel discussions on race, religion, and identity issues and has been a guest host of NPR's "Fresh Air." He lives with his family in Queens.
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