Many older immigrants in NYC struggling
NEW YORK — Francisco Palacios, who grew up poor in Ecuador, came to New York City in 1986 so that he could earn enough to someday retire back home.
But after getting stuck in low-paying jobs at restaurants, construction sites and a laundromat, Palacios, now 70, has no savings and is just trying to survive. Most weekdays, he waits on a street corner in Queens with other day laborers in hopes that someone will hire him to paint homes. “I still feel I have the energy and the strength to work,” he said in Spanish, through a translator, though he believes, “I have no future.”
Older immigrants like Palacios now make up just over half of New York City’s 65and-older population. Their numbers have increased at more than twice the rate of U.S.-born seniors since 2010, mainly because of the graying of immigrants who came decades ago as young adults and workers.
Many of these immigrants said they never expected to grow old in the city and, after years of saying, “I’m leaving tomorrow,” are simply not prepared for that reality when it comes. Some are still chasing the American dream long after their prime working years. Others have stayed because they cannot bring themselves to leave the children and grandchildren they have here or the life they have carved out for themselves.
Older immigrants have largely propelled the rapid growth of the city’s 65-andolder population to 1.4 million, according to a census analysis by Social Explorer, a data research company. In 2022, there were 713,000 older immigrants, a 57% increase from 2010. During that same period, the number of U.S.-born older residents rose 25% to 678,000.
These older immigrants — from dozens of countries, including the Dominican Republic, China, Jamaica, Haiti and Colombia — have made the city’s neighborhoods more diverse. They have helped keep the economy humming, but their fastgrowing numbers also threaten to further strain limited social services and resources in a city already grappling with a migrant crisis.
While many seniors struggle with financial hardship and social isolation, older immigrants can be among the worst off, immigration experts said. They tend to have less education than their U.S.-born peers and are less likely to have retirement or investment income, the census analysis found. The median annual income for an older immigrant was $14,592, or roughly half of the $30,019 for a U.S.-born senior.
Many older immigrants have no nest egg after years of working in low-paid jobs and often receive less in Social Security income than U.S.-born residents. The immigrants living in the country without legal permission are not eligible to collect any amount. Some older immigrants also get limited help because of language and cultural barriers.
Cheung Gim Fung, 92, who worked as a cook in Chinese restaurants after immigrating from Hong Kong in the 1950s, has felt increasingly isolated in his Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn as newer waves of Chinese immigrants from Fujian have settled around him. “I don’t speak English. I don’t speak Mandarin. I don’t speak Fujianese,” said Cheung, who visits a nearby bakery every day to sit with other Cantonese-speaking immigrants.
Some older immigrants have already slipped into poverty and homelessness, and more will follow unless city leaders find ways to help them, said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit that has reported on older immigrants and the state’s rapidly aging population. In 2022, there were 163,000 older immigrants living at or below the poverty line, a 37% increase from a decade earlier, according to the center.
“Immigrants have given so much to the city in their working lives,” Bowles said. “It would be just unfathomable for the city to turn its back on immigrants as they get older and as their needs grow.”
Despite being disproportionately concentrated in low-wage jobs, immigrants are an important part of the local economy, responsible for about 31% of all goods and services produced in the New York metro area, according to David Dyssegaard Kallick, director of Immigration Research Initiative, a nonprofit research group.
While retirement benefits are primarily determined by the federal government, city officials and social service agencies have sought to provide health care and support services to immigrants regardless of their legal status. NYC Aging, a city agency with a $523 million annual budget, will continue to provide free meals and other programs to seniors even as the city faces a fiscal crisis, including from the costs of sheltering migrants seeking asylum, said Edgar Yu, a spokesperson.
But that is not enough to meet the needs of the soaring elderly population, said Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, a Brooklyn Democrat who, as chair of the council’s aging committee, has pointed out that less than 1% of the overall city budget is spent on older adult services. She has also worked to pass recent laws that expand legal protections and services for older adults, including requiring senior centers in immigrant communities to offer programming in multiple languages.
Most of these older immigrants came in waves in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, after
Bing Guan / The New York Times sweeping changes to a federal immigration law lifted long-standing quotas on many countries and ushered in a period of increased immigration from around the world, said Jeanne Batalova, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a research group in Washington. The majority of these earlier immigrants have since become U.S. citizens.
Gustavo Rincón arrived in New York in 1973 from Colombia and later went to work as a draftsman for Con Edison before retiring more than a decade ago with a pension. Rincón, now 69, thought about returning to Cartagena — “I love my roots, my culture,” he said — but found that it was too hot, and the living standard “still has a long way to go.”
Sara Melendez left her five children behind in Ecuador in 1991 to find work in New York to support them. “I was living day by day,” said Melendez, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter, as she recalled toiling as a seamstress in a garment factory. Today, four of her children still live in Ecuador, along with 11 grandchildren, but Melendez, now 89 and a U.S. citizen, lives by herself in a subsidized housing project on the Lower East Side.
Melendez, who has diabetes, said she stays because the medical care is better than in Ecuador. She also relies on a network of services for older adults provided by the Henry Street Settlement, a social service agency, including a bilingual caseworker, home health aide, nutrition checks and a women’s emotional support group called “Esperanza,” or hope in Spanish.
In recent years, some immigrants were already older when they arrived. Many were brought over by their grown children, who have become U.S. citizens, often to help care for their grandchildren.
A dozen Chinese grandfathers recently gathered on folding chairs on a Brooklyn sidewalk to talk and play cards. Chen Renhou, 71, wore a baseball cap with the words “Proud American,” while his wife showed photos of their village in China.
Sitting nearby, Jiang Aiguo, 71, said he was a farmer in Fujian province before moving in with his son’s family eight years ago to become “the nanny.” Jiang said that he had adjusted to city life but missed his home in China where he had more room and privacy. Now, he added, “I’m always waiting to use the bathroom.” New Immigrant Community Empowerment, an advocacy group in Queens that runs job training and development programs, has started teaching financial, technical and life skills to immigrants to help them prepare for the long-term. “We’re looking at them getting older,” said Hildalyn Colón Hernández, the group’s deputy director, adding that many of them “never think about the future.”