"The New York [of] 40 years ago was an American city," the British writer J. B. Priestley observed in 1947, "but today's glittering cosmopolis belongs to the world, if the world does not belong ...

But in one crucial aspect, its demographics, the city had returned to its roots. New York was once again a city of immigrants. It had not always been so. Despite the popular vision of New York the ...