Life in "Progress" city - New York edition

Bedbugs are taking over New York.

A new Daily News-Marist poll suggests that The City That Never Sleeps is probably too busy itching: One in 10 New Yorkers has now battled bedbugs in their home.

That's twice as many as the city estimated were plagued by the pests in 2009.

The poll results suggest that more than 800,000 New Yorkers have had bloodsucking bedbugs crawling in their sheets.

"I got all chewed up," said Margaret Martinez, 61, of the Bronx, one of the 11% of poll respondents who reported having personal run-ins with the tiny bloodthirsty insects.

"I woke up and I had bites all over my arms and my face. I was all swollen," she said.

From swanky glass lofts to creaky tenement walkups, the plague of parasites appears to have spread fairly evenly across the five boroughs.

Ask any pest exterminator where bed bugs come from and they will almost unanimously tell you they come from illegal immigrants.

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