In 1998, nearly three quarters of all immigrants in the United States lived in California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey or Illinois. Housing discrimination remains a factor in the persistence of racial enclaves in American cities. However, more recent patterns of migration, such as chain migration, challenge traditional methods of enclaves establishment. Historical ethnic enclaves Ethnic enclaves have become commonplace in modern times, with the increase in the geographic mobility of humankind. However, they have also arisen in historical times, for various reasons. The village of Schandorf, now in Austria, was for centuries a Croatian ethnic enclave, surrounded by areas of Austrian and Hungarian ethnicity. The enclave originated around 1543 when the Hungarian magnate Batthyany sought to repopulate lands that had been emptied by devastating Turkish attacks; he invited Croatian settlers. The town of Alghero in Sardinia still marginally preserves a Catalan ethnic enclave; this dates from a military conquest of the town by Catalans in the 14th century. Ethnic enclaves also arose when a people remained in its original territory but came to be surrounded by a far more numerous majority, as in the case of Vepsians and Russians. Many of New York's neighborhoods were once Italian neighborhoods, to the point of New York in the nineteenth and twentieth century once having an Italian population larger than that of Rome, the Italian capital at the time. See also List of ethnic enclaves in North American cities List of ethnic enclaves in Philippine cities Ethnoburb Ghetto Language island References Ethnic groups