"Who cares who you were or what you were doing before you moved here? Your New Yorkiversary is the day you really arrived — figuratively as well as literally." (New York Post)
And in a separate piece, Danica Lo explores the topic some more...:
In this great city we call home, there are two kinds of residents: New Yorkers and people who've just lived here a while.
Sorry, kids.
It doesn't matter how much you feel like a New Yorker, how fast you walk, how many slices of pizza you've gobbled or how much vitriol you seethe at tourists. Forking over income tax to the city doesn't get you a NY-er badge.
Students, your tuition and living costs at NYU and Columbia may be steep, but they don't buy you native status. And if you grew up out of state, moved to the city after college and have worked here for 10 years? Sorry, you're still a transplant.
As a native — I grew up in Queens, went to preschool in Bayside, PS 31, MS 158 and Stuyvesant High School (with all the other Asians) and have worked here all my professional life — my tenuous and negotiable definition is that you're a New Yorker if you completed the majority of your formative years' pre-college education — elementary, middle, junior and high school — somewhere in the five boroughs.
