The Dynamics of Immigration in Jackson Heights

Mehta says that when he arrived, it was a tough neighborhood with fewer Asians:

"At the time that we came here, most of the South Asians in this neighborhood were Indians, and most of them Gujarati. Now, it's a much more diverse mix of South Asians: Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Tibetans, Bhutanese. The Indians started coming here in large numbers after the 1965 Immigration Act."

"There's something about the diversity of these streets that is attractive to people from all over, like a piano player or a software engineer raised in Kansas, for example. Increasingly, creative people will want to live in the kind of city where they have a choice between pupusas and parathas. Diversity isn't just a nice thing to have, it is actively essential to attract the kind of people that create wealth."