Permanent Resident? New York Is the Place to Be!

With permanent resident status one can literally go anywhere within the United States and when you win a green card through the Green Card Lottery this is especially true. New York is the traditional entry way for immigrants to the United States and the city of New York reflects this with its sheer demographic diversity. However, the city is not the only place to live in New York, New York State is a beautiful and historic place to live.

The GE Building

For the entirety of its history New York has been a center of culture, finance, literature and the arts. Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American transcendentalists of the 19th century called New York and the surrounding areas their homes during their lives and the landscapes are preserved within their poetry and prose.

New York was also instrumental in the formation of American politics being the home of Alexander Hamilton and the groups known as the Federalists and the Antifederalists. Because New York State contained both a large urban center as well as vast wildernesses it has traditionally had interesting impacts on social thinking and government. In many ways it has set the scene for many discussions in American spheres of thought.

The city of New York is generally considered the cultural capital of the United States and is home to an enormous artistic community. It is also one of the largest cities in the world. Gigantic skyscrapers reach out from the center of the island of Manhattan and the city continues to stretch far and away even, technically, into the state of New Jersey. Wall Street, the economic hub of the Western world is ensconced in the steel and concrete cliffs of downtown New York. Madison Avenue, the center of the advertising business, is named after a street in Manhattan. Home to huge media companies the New York Times, the worldwide newspaper of record operates here. NBC, founded by Belarusian immigrant David Sarnoff keeps its headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center.

People from New York refer to themselves as New Yorkers and the term comes with a moderate sense of pride and identity. Being a New Yorker informs one’s view of the world in a different way than many other people in the world view it. Oftentimes comedy shows (such as Saturday Night Live, which is aired from NBC’s headquarters in Manhattan) poke fun at New Yorkers as being surly, loud and confrontational. However, this stereotype is only in jest because the camaraderie that was displayed on September 11, 2001, the day of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks, showed that New Yorkers possess much greater depth than such paper thin descriptions.

Aside from New York City, which is a truly spectacular sight to behold alone, there are a variety of other attractions in the state of New York. The Adirondack State Park is unique in that it is the largest state park in the United States. There are also a variety of National parks and monuments including the Statue of Liberty and Niagara Falls, a rather impressive waterfall on the border between New York State and Ontario, Canada.

So be sure to sign up for the Green Card Lottery this month so that you can have the chance to trace the footsteps of other famous immigrants and become a New Yorker yourself!