How our hometown has changed, and why it's a great place to watch the world go by.
by Michael Elliott

1    Welcome to the new New York. In a fascinating report issued by the city's department of planning last week, the full scale of the transformation of the city is laid bare. In 1970, 18 percent of New York's population was foreign-born. By 1995, the figure had risen to 33 percent, and an additional 20 percent of the population were the U.S.-born offspring of immigrants. So immigrants and their children now form a majority of New York's population.
2    Who are these new New Yorkers? Why do they come here?  Where are they from? (OK, time to drop the "they". I'm one of them.) The last question, at least, is easy to answer: we come from everywhere. In the list of the top 20 source nations of those sending immigrants to New York between 1990 and 1994 are six countries in Asia, five in the Caribbean, four in Latin America, three in Europe, plus Israel and the former Soviet Union. "New York is the Mecca of the world", says Van Panourgias, who owns the MoonRock diner (great pancakes) and who arrived here from Greece in 1963. I knew that there was literally nowhere that didn't send people to New York a year or so ago. And when we immigrants get here, we roll up our sleeves. "If you're not ready to work when you get to New York", says Panourgias, "you better hit the road."
3    Rudolph Giuliani, the mayor of New York, knows our value. "Immigration", he said last week, "continues to shape the unique character and drive the economic engine of New York City. ... Immigration is crucial to maintaining New York City's position as the capital of the world and is essential to its continued success."
4    In the quarter century since 1970, the United States admitted about 15 million legal immigrants, and has absorbed them into ___(I)___ social structures with an ease beyond the contemplation of any other nation on the planet. That, in my view, is the single most impressive feat of the American character in modern times.
And since these immigrants are overwhelmingly aspirational and entrepreneurial, ___(II)___ absorption is a guarantee that America will continue to renew ___(III)___ in the next century.
(Adapted from Newsweek - January 20, 1997)

As lacunas I, II e III do texto devem ser preenchidas, respectivamente, por: