It was a celebration of multiculturalism at City Hall Plaza on September 23, as hundreds of immigrants and supporters partook in the in the city’s 11th annual New Bostonians Community Day.
The daylong event featured ethnic food and live cultural music. Legal, housing, English-learning, job-training information for communities to learn about various services offered by City Hall and other organizations were readily available at various booths.
Kenneth Kan, an outreach assistant at the Asian American Civic Association (AACA), was manning a booth at City Hall Plaza. He handed out fliers to immigrants who are looking for job training and English-language classes. “Although AACA has primarily been serving Asian communities, especially in the Chinatown neighborhood, the programs at AACA can greatly benefit virtually any immigrant and even some low-income natural born Americans,” Kan said.
Kan believes that through partnering with other community-based organizations (CBOs), AACA can effectively reach out to more minority and disadvantaged residents in the Greater Boston area. “We must proactively reach out not only because immigrants are in need of immediate and long-term assistance, but also because they are usually reluctant as well as unable to locate resources and those who could help,” Kan said.
Participants proudly held up flags of their native countries, including China, Haiti, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
The Office of New Bostonians (ONB) was established in 1998 to meet the needs of the growing and changing immigrant and newcomer communities in Boston. The ONB’s purpose is “to strengthen the ability of immigrants and the diverse cultural and linguistic communities of which they are a part to fully participate in the economic, civic, social and cultural life of the City of Boston, and to promote the commemoration and public understanding of the contributions of immigrants.”
According to the New Bostonians 2009 report prepared for the Mayor’s Office, Boston had the 5th highest proportion of foreign-born residents among the 25 largest U.S. cities in 2008. Half of New Bostonians come from the Americans (49%), followed by Asia (24%), Europe (15%), and Africa (10%). In 2007, the largest immigrant groups in Boston in 2007 were from China (8.6%), Haiti (8.5%), and the Dominican Republic (7.9%).
In 2007, 912,310 immigrants were counted in Massachusetts, comprising 14.1 percent of the state’s population, according to a report released by The Immigration Learning Center in Malden. Among the immigrant population in the state, 33.9 percent were from Latin America, 27.8 percent from Asia and 26.6 percent from Europe.
