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Seeking a Better Life
Coming to Work Hope & Hardship Newcomer Networks Creating a Home
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Coming to Work

Jobs and opportunity draw immigrants to Brooklyn. Immigrants, in turn, bring energy, skills, and ideas that create more jobs and opportunity.

Today's newcomers are often Latin Americans, Eastern Europeans, and Asians. Yesterday's, were Italians and Jews, who in turn followed Germans and Irish. Many immigrants find jobs within their ethnic communities or practice trades they learned in their homelands. Others seek whatever work they can find. Brooklyn's port and factories once were the top employers. Now, schools, hospitals, government, and other service industries lead.

The Sugar Refinery Packing Room 'As the original sugar refiners in Brooklyn were Germans, it was natural that they should gather German workingmen about them. … and the yard men, laborers and teamsters were Irish.'
The Sugar Refinery Packing Room
1894
The Illustrated American
Courtesy of Russell Hallock
'Although I received my license to practice nursing in Jamaica, there was a nursing shortage in Brooklyn . . . My first snowstorm in Brooklyn, I woke up at two in the morning and there was light all over the place. It took me a while to adjust. 'A nurse grows in Brooklyn,' that's me!' Thelma Martin (far right), nurse manager
Brookdale Hospital, Neonatal Unit
2002
Courtesy of Martha Cooper

Brooklyn Public Library The Brooklyn Historical Society