Zohran Mamdani Says Immigrants Helped Build New York City, Points to His Own Family’s Journey

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used America’s 250th birthday to deliver a message that was both personal and unmistakably political: immigrants did not simply arrive in New York. They helped create the city the world recognizes today.

Speaking at City Hall, Mamdani sat behind a desk once used by George Washington. Ten recently naturalized Americans stood nearby holding U.S. flags as the mayor traced New York’s story from the Revolutionary War to its modern immigrant neighborhoods.

Although some descriptions of the speech have focused specifically on Muslim immigrants, Mamdani’s remarks were broader. He celebrated immigrants of different races, nationalities and religions, including Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Quakers and Christians. He then connected that history to his own experience as a Muslim immigrant who arrived from Uganda with his family at age seven and later became a naturalized citizen.

A New York Story Written by New Arrivals

Mamdani’s speech unfolded like a fast-moving tour through New York history.

He recalled Irish families escaping famine, Chinese sailors establishing roots in what became Chinatown, Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms, Italians escaping poverty and Syrians searching for economic opportunity. Many arrived with little money, limited political power and no guarantee that their new country would welcome them.

Instead of presenting immigration as a smooth success story, Mamdani acknowledged the uglier chapters. New arrivals faced discriminatory laws, dangerous factories, poor housing, employment restrictions and organized hostility.

Still, they stayed. They opened stores, raised families, formed religious communities, worked difficult jobs and changed the sound, taste and rhythm of New York.

“Immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City,” Mamdani said.

The mayor also placed Muslim immigrants within that much larger American tradition. He noted that the country received people who had been persecuted because of how they worshipped, including Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Puritans and Quakers.

That distinction matters. Mamdani was not arguing that one religious community created New York by itself. His message was that generations of outsiders, including people once treated with suspicion, collectively built the city.

The latest city data support the scale of that influence. New York’s foreign-born population stands at approximately 3.1 million. Immigrants account for more than one-third of the city’s population and 43 percent of its workforce. Nearly half of New Yorkers speak a language other than English at home, while about two-thirds are first or second-generation residents.

Those numbers appear in everyday life. They can be seen in Queens food markets, Bronx apartment buildings, Brooklyn places of worship, Staten Island businesses and Manhattan offices. New York’s immigrant identity is not confined to Ellis Island photographs. It remains visible on almost every subway platform.

Mamdani Connects the City’s History to His Own

The speech became more personal when Mamdani described arriving in New York with his family.

Unlike earlier generations who entered the harbor by ship, Mamdani said his family saw the Statue of Liberty through an airplane window. For him, that view represented the possibility that America could continue moving closer to the ideals written into its founding documents.

Mamdani became a U.S. citizen in 2018. His path eventually carried him to City Hall, where he became New York City’s first Muslim mayor. That history gave his remarks additional weight as he spoke directly to the newly naturalized citizens standing beside him.

Rather than defining American greatness through wealth or military power, Mamdani described it as the ability of ordinary people to change their circumstances and reshape the country.

“The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place,” he said.

It was an optimistic argument, but not an uncritical one.

Without repeatedly naming President Donald Trump, Mamdani criticized federal immigration enforcement and political messages suggesting that the country becomes weaker when it welcomes more people. CBS New York described the address as a direct challenge to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, even though Mamdani avoided making the entire speech about the president.

Mamdani also accused political leaders of using immigration to divide voters and gain power.

“Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest,” he said.

The White House did not appear to issue a specific response to Mamdani’s speech in the reports reviewed for this article.

Newly Naturalized Americans React to the Message

Some of the strongest responses came from immigrants who were inside City Hall.

Luba Cortes of Make the Road New York told NY1 that Mamdani’s background allows him to connect with people navigating the immigrant experience.

“He understands what it means to be an immigrant, he understands the hustle,” Cortes said.

Nagwa Edris, one of the recently naturalized citizens attending the event, described the United States as a place where people escaping difficult conditions can find stability.

“America is our safety, our home,” Edris said.

Their reactions captured the emotional center of Mamdani’s address. Immigration debates are often reduced to court rulings, enforcement statistics, campaign slogans and arguments over the border. Inside City Hall, the discussion centered on people who had already built lives, found work and taken the citizenship oath.

Mamdani’s speech was not simply a celebration of his Muslim identity, although that identity remains an important part of his public story. It was a broader defense of New York’s immigrant character and a warning against treating new arrivals as though they stand outside the American experience.

His argument was straightforward: Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Italian, Syrian, Caribbean, African, South Asian, Latin American and Muslim communities did not weaken New York by arriving. They made the city larger, busier, louder, more complicated and more recognizably New York.

For a city famous for constantly reinventing itself, that may be the most New York message possible.