WXXI Overview

WXXI logos
Downloadable versions

Monday, May 3 at 10:30 p.m. – Immigrants in the Lead: The Story of New York

(Rochester, NY) – Immigrants in the Lead: The Story of New York, airing Monday, May 3 at 10:30 p.m. on WXXI-TV (DT21.1/cable 1011 and 11), explores multiple dimensions of the immigrant experience. There is growing recognition among both social scientists and elected leaders that New York State's burgeoning foreign-born population may be integral to overcoming New York's current economic challenges. Today's Dominicans, Cambodians, Haitians, Guyanese, and Hmong are like the Irish, Germans, Italians, Jews, and Eastern Europeans that arrived here 100 years ago.  The faces may have changed in the waves of immigrants that affected New York City but the population's capacity for hard work and entrepreneurship has not changed. 

Immigrants in the Lead takes viewers on a journey from a Glatt Kosher Deli on Essex Street on the Lower East Side to a Taiwanese bakery in Flushing, called one of New York's "new" Chinatowns, to meet first and second generation political leaders, academics, and others with insights into the successes of immigrants, as well as the barriers to their success.

The half-hour broadcast, written and produced by WCNY’s News and Public Affairs Director Susan Arbetter, features Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, lifetime resident of the Lower East Side and the product of Jewish immigrants from Russia as well as newly elected New York City Comptroller John Liu, a first generation immigrant from Taiwan.

Pictured: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and WCNY’s News and Public Affairs Director Susan Arbetter
Credit: WCNY-Production

###