Nancy Scola

On this, the last day of the FCC's public comment period on its "Open Internet" rulemaking, nearly every point for or against net neutrality regulations has been made, and often many, many times. And yet there's a late entrant in the field offering a somewhat novel take.

Nine members of the New York City Council, led by councilmember Ben Kallos of Roosevelt Island and the Upper East Side, have signed onto a last-minute filing supporting net neutrality.

The councilmembers' pro-neutrality starting point isn't the city's considerable new tech scene but the fact that about one-third of the city's population was born somewhere other than in the United States. Of course, New York City has long been a magnet for immigrants. But  the immigrant existence takes on a different texture in an era when long-distance calling fees and hard-to-find native newspapers have been replaced by cheap and easy digital communications.