Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the northern Gulf of Mexico coast in August 2005, including the casino city of Biloxi, Mississippi. A few days after the hurricane, city residents were still struggling with devastation but a few small businesses began to reopen. One of these was the International Food Mart, owned by Imelda Duvane. The store catered to Filipino casino workers and featured items such as sardines in tomato sauce, coconut gel and duck eggs dyed fuchsia, supposedly good for the libido. Like Atlantic City, Biloxi's casinos had attracted a diverse set of employees who established their own unique communities amidst the golden economic opportunities.

By the late 1990s, the ethnic communities and diverse residents of greater Atlantic City were not exactly out of the sight lines of casino visitors. Collectively, immigrants had become a major force in the labour-intensive casino industry of Atlantic City; by then, they predominated as table dealers, slot machine attendants, cashiers, valets, waiters, busboys, cleaners, cooks and room service attendants. Yet, ethnic diversity and global sensibility were hardly associated with Atlantic City. Most casino customers hardly noticed who was cashing their slots vouchers or bringing them drinks to accompany their buffet meals, though some may have noticed the increasing numbers of immigrants working in the casinos or in the stores alongside Atlantic Avenue. The immigrants who populated the casino industry in Atlantic City were hidden in plain sight from the millions of casino patrons, yet they contributed powerfully to the remaking of the old resort town into a dynamic, diverse and thriving American casino community.

The new immigration of Atlantic City's casino era actually replicated the earlier experience of earlier generations in the region. Between 1880 and 1920, there was a strong wave of immigration to the city and, by the early twentieth century, it was extensively populated by foreign immigrants: Jewish, Italian and Irish primarily. By about 1910, the Ducktown neighbourhood (around Atlantic and Arctic Avenues in the middle part of the city) had become an immigrant enclave for multitudes of Italians who migrated to the region.