CORONA, Queens -- Encouraged by cheers, Constantino Martinez, 28, gets up from his chair and grabs the microphone. Everyone in the bar is watching as he starts to sing along with the Mariachi band behind him.  

            Martinez has a deep voice and feels the music as he closes his eyes to strike the chord. As he hits the chorus, both the musicians wearing white outfits and shiny boots, and the 50 or so people in the audience begin to sing along.

            Martinez, who works as a cook in a Manhattan restaurant, came to New York from Puebla, Mexico, just three years ago, leaving his wife and children behind. Now, to remind him of home he, and many other Latin American immigrants in this Queens neighborhood, gather at local karaoke-style bars, where they can sing the songs of their native countries.

             “I sing because I remember,” said Martinez. “Because when I sing I remember my childhood in the fields, and my family and my kids I miss so much. I sing because otherwise I would go insane.”

            From the smells of tandoori chicken in Jackson Heights’s Little India to the thriving Chinese and Korean communities of Flushing, Queens is the most eclectic borough in the United States. About 200 languages are spoken among its residents, making every few blocks seem like a plane ride away from the next.

            Out of the 2.9 million immigrants living in New York City, 1.1 million of them live in Queens. The newest arrivals are mainly young Latin American men from Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico who are concentrated near the No. 7 subway line across Roosevelt Avenue in Corona/Elmhurst.