Opinion

Driving to America

Recently the Taxi and Limousine Commission released figures confirming what every New Yorker who’s ever hailed a cab already knows: Most of this city’s taxi drivers were born in some other country.

In fact, it turns out that only 8 percent of cabbies and for-hire drivers were born in the United States. For yellow taxis, the figure is even lower: only 6 percent of drivers born in America. That’s a huge reversal from 1980, when nearly two-thirds of our taxi drivers were native-born.

The high percentage of immigrants driving our cabs has fed many standard jokes and complaints about, as an earlier report on taxis put it, “foreigners befuddled with the English language, unable to find the Empire State Building and prone to overcharge, refuse and abuse passengers.” The idea seems to be that if we didn’t have all these foreigners, we’d have cabs driven by helpful, wise-cracking guys with Brooklyn accents out of some 1940s movie.

Truth is, if we didn’t have immigrants driving city cabs, we’d likely have fewer cabs on the road and less service.

It’s not an easy life. For one thing, cabbies don’t often own their own cabs. They pay a fee to the fleet owner who rents them a cab for a set period of time. When some drivers put in 12-hour shifts, it’s no wonder this is an immigrant-dominated industry.

Even here, the demographics continue to change. Just a few years ago, the highest percentage of cabbies came from Pakistan; today it’s Bangladesh.

Who knows where tomorrow’s cab drivers will come from? We’re just glad these immigrants are still coming to New York. And clearly willing to work.