Jamaican American - Settlement

Settlement

According to the text of Immigrant America (p. 69), there were 554,897 Jamaican-born people living in the US in 2000. This represents 61% of the approximate 911,000 Americans of Jamaican ancestry. Many Jamaicans are second, third and descend from even older generations as there have been Jamaicans in the US as early as the early twentieth Century. The regional composition is as follows: 59 percent live in the Northeast mainly in New York; 4.8 percent in the Midwest; 30.6 percent in the Southern United States, particularly South Florida; and 5.6 percent on the West. The New York metropolitan area and South Florida have the largest number of Jamaican immigrants in the United States and Florida are home to the highest number of illegal Jamaicans whereas most Legal immigrants tend to reside in Brooklyn. Jamaicans refer to Miami metropolitan area and Brooklyn colloquially as "Kingston 21" and "Little Jamaica" respectively. Large communities of Jamaican immigrants have formed in New York City and the New York Metro Area, which includes Long Island and much of New Jersey and Connecticut, along with South Florida (centered in and around Miami and Fort Lauderdale) and Philadelphia, which has the second largest Jamaican community in the US. In recent years, many Jamaicans have left New York City for its suburbs, and large Jamaican communities have also formed in Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, New York, Los Angeles, and Providence, Rhode Island.