Finding Niches in a New Land

By John Greenwald

"What country is this?" Many bemused Americans might ask that question as they go about their work and play. Whether shopping for vegetables among the hundreds of Korean-run greengroceries in Manhattan, or stopping for the night at one of the innumerable Indian-owned hotels in California, Americans are increasingly finding that entire businesses have acquired a foreign-born flavor. Indeed, through a process that is at times too slow to be noticed and at others astonishingly quick, industrious newcomers have been carving out miniature monopolies for themselves in corners of the U.S. economy.

The latest immigrants are following an arduous and traditional path into American society. Throughout the country's history, groups of newcomers have tended to cluster in certain jobs and then dominate their chosen fields by long and hard work. "This is a very common, recurrent phenomenon," says Harvard Sociologist Daniel Bell. German arrivals with names like Schlitz, Busch and Miller became beermakers in the mid-19th century, for example, while Italians grew fruits and vegetables and produced wine.

Immigrants flock to certain fields for a variety of reasons. The new occupations are often adaptations of what the immigrants did before. "People look for a match between what they can do and what offers an opportunity," says Harvard Sociologist Nathan Glazer. "They try to find a niche, and what's surprising is that there's always a niche to fill." Jewish tailors from Central and Eastern Europe became important in the American garment industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Chinese laborers, barred by discrimination from many occupations in the American West, found that they could become entrepreneurs by opening laundries.

Newcomers often gravitate to a field because their countrymen are already there. The old-timers give financial aid and practical advice and generally make the arrivals welcome. Such support gives a sense of security in a foreign and sometimes hostile environment.

The fledgling businessmen encounter varying degrees of resistance. In Texas, fighting broke out between Vietnamese shrimpers, who began arriving in force in the late 1970s, and the American fishermen who were already there. More often, the newcomers move into occupations that other groups are leaving. The immigrants are thus frequently like younger siblings who inherit the possessions of their older brothers and sisters.

The arrivals are prodigious savers. Since their goals are to expand their businesses and provide their children with the education they will need to move up in U.S. society, the new entrepreneurs tend to live frugally. Instead of spending their earnings on flashy cars and other items, the immigrants use their income to invest in the future.

Enclaves of foreign-born businessmen can be found in almost every major American city. Yet each area and ethnic group has its own particular style. Their one common characteristic is hard work. Young Jun Kwon, 37, a Korean- born greengrocer in New York City, is typical. His workday starts at 2 a.m. and ends at 8 p.m. By dawn, he has already selected and loaded about 3,000 lbs. of fresh produce into his 1982 Dodge pickup van and hauled it to his Brooklyn store. There Young joins his wife Ok Kyung, 31, and his brother Young Sin, 26, in scrubbing tomatoes, eggplants, apples and other fruits and vegetables in icy water and stacking them in gleaming pyramids before the store opens at 8 a.m. for another twelve-hour day.

A decade of this Sunday-to-Sunday routine has left Young with a permanently sore back and sapped some of his still considerable energy. Says he: "I thought I could go on with three or four hours of sleep forever, but it seems that I can't any more. I've tried, but I can't." He now sometimes takes several hour-long catnaps during the day.

That kind of effort has enabled Young and other Korean-born merchants to take over much of New York City's greengrocery trade from Italians and European- born Jews, whose children were moving on to professions or more profitable occupations. "We revived a business that was dying," says Kim Sung Soo, executive director of the Korean Produce Association. Since the first shops opened in the 1960s, some 1,000 Korean-run outlets have sprouted around the city. They account for 85% of the independent fruit-and-vegetable stores, and have taken a 20% bite out of supermarket business. "They've forced retailers like us to sell better-quality produce and display it more attractively," says Jules Rose, chairman of Sloan's, a citywide grocery chain.

The Koreans' experience is echoed in New York City by the Indians and Pakistanis who dominate the city's newsstand business. An estimated 70% of New York's 5,000 kiosks are under their control. One of the largest operators is Bhawnesh Kapoor, 43, president of Kapoor Bros., which has more than 200 outlets and about $17 million in annual revenues.

A native of the Punjab, Kapoor came to the U.S. in 1972 with $68 in his pocket and experience as a certified accountant. He started with one newsstand on Wall Street, but by 1983 he had built his business to the point where he was able to win a 15-year license to run all the stands in the New York City subway system. When some 70 rival operators refused to give up their locations, Kapoor obtained eviction orders against them.

Kapoor's successes have attracted other Indians who are willing to work twelve-hour-plus days for $200 to $250 a week. Says Kapoor: "I offer them jobs in my own network and help them get jobs with other newsstand companies. I enjoy helping them." By diligent saving, the employees can gradually assemble the $10,000 to $15,000 that it takes to start their own newsstands. They may then double their weekly income.

The business strongholds that newcomers build are as varied as the immigrants. In Miami, Cubans play an important role in the local financial community. More than 400 Cuban-born executives hold the rank of vice president or higher in Miami's banks. "I'd say we control between 15% and 20% of the Miami banking industry," says Carlos Arboleya, 56, a former Havana banker now vice chairman of the Barnett Bank of South Florida (assets: $3.5 billion).

Among the area's financial executives is Yvonne Santa Maria, who fled Cuba in 1963 aboard a Red Cross flight and now is president of Ponce de Leon Federal Savings and Loan in Coral Gables (1984 assets: $27.8 million). Santa Maria, who left behind a small family fortune in Havana real estate, attended night school and job-hopped among several banks before being asked by a friend in 1980 to help launch Ponce de Leon. Says she: "I am extremely, I mean to the utmost, thankful to the United States."

Miami's garment district, once run chiefly by Italians and East European Jews, is another enclave of Cubans. Their plants and showrooms sprawl over several square miles of Dade County and offer everything from sportswear to accessories. "The Cubans really put some zing into this industry," says Erwin Fine, owner of Florida Thread and Trimmings. "Almost 100% of the small manufacturers are Cuban, almost 100% of the contractors, big and small, are Cuban, and almost all the top management is Cuban."

Among the area's clothing manufacturers is Antonio Acosta, 40, owner of Tony and Toni Fashions in nearby Hialeah. It makes sportswear and has annual revenues of about $500,000. Acosta, who left Cuba for the U.S. at 16, headed for the garment district, one of the few sources of jobs for Cuban newcomers. Says he: "When I came to Miami in 1960, I didn't speak any English. I had no money and no job. I started as a sweeper, cleaning the factory." After mastering various industry skills, Acosta sank his savings into a garment- cutting service in 1967 and parlayed that into his first clothing line three years later.

Some of the most influential foreign-born businessmen in Houston are Iranians, many of whom fled their country in the late 1970s, around the time of the fall of the Shah. They have since flocked to real estate, and are currently constructing developments ranging from housing to shopping centers. Says Ali Ebrahimi, 43, whose company, Ersa Grae, has built five subdivisions in Houston and two more in Nashville: "What I have been able to do with very little money is to attract the confidence of big institutions to back me by putting together projects that work. In the U.S., if you have a good idea, people will support you." Ebrahimi, who received a master's degree in civil engineering from the University of Maryland in 1966, once ran a manufactured- housing concern in Iran that had 5,000 employees.

In California, natives of the Indian state of Gujarat, where millions of people bear the family name Patel, operate inexpensive motels from San Diego to the Oregon border. The first Patel was Nanlal, who with a partner bought the old Ford Hotel in Sacramento during World War II. Scores of Patels followed. Naranji Patel, 45, owner of the Sands and Park View lodgings in San Jose, estimates that up to 80% of the state's 1,500 independently run motels with fewer than 25 rooms are in Indian hands. Most lodgings were purchased from small operators who wanted to quit the business. Says Patel: "We knew each other from India, before we came out. The personal relations make a lot of difference. It's just word of mouth."

The newcomers put their entire families to work changing sheets, sweeping floors and watching the front desk. Indian enthusiasm for the hotel trade has remained strong. Boasts Naranji Patel: "You can travel from San Francisco to New York, and there's not a town where an Indian, a Patel, is not there."

California's foreign-born entrepreneurs include many Palestinians who have taken over grocery stores. Fuad Mogannam, 51, a Christian Palestinian from Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, estimates that nearly half of San Francisco's 1,100 small groceries are run by his compatriots. A number of the stores are in distressed areas that the previous owners were eager to leave. The newcomers are helped by old-timers who co-sign loans and instruct the arrivals in the need for putting in long days. Says Mogannam, who has owned 15 groceries: "The wife, the little kid can work behind the cash register. You use your family. How else are you going to make it?"

The business of caring for the elderly, mentally ill and disabled in some areas of California is dominated by immigrants from the Philippines. According to Charles Skoien, executive vice president of the California Association of Residential Care Homes, about half of the nonmedical rest homes in the San Francisco and Santa Rosa areas are Filipino owned. The newcomers say they drifted into that field in part because of their cultural heritage. Says Zenaida Mallari, 40, a Philippine-born owner of two six-bed facilities: "In the rest of the world you find the families are extended. Without asking how or why, you take care of the elderly in the old country. That's why a lot of Filipinos take to this work."

The sudden arrival of immigrants, and their slow takeover of entire segments of a local economy, is not always a peaceful process. Sometimes strife breaks out between the new Americans and old Americans. On the Texas coast, Vietnamese refugees now dominate the shrimping industry. The immigrants, who , have come over the past decade, had fished for a living in Viet Nam. They were able to dominate the industry by working together as families. They put in twelve-hour days, subsist mainly on a diet of rice and fish, and often cram several families into a small apartment. They waste nothing. Americans throw back "rough" fish like sheepshead and mullet, but the Vietnamese live on them.

Tensions between the immigrants and American fishermen have led to violence. The hostilities peaked in 1979, when a Texas skipper in Seadrift, near Corpus Christi, was shot to death in a dispute over crabbing rights. After two Vietnamese brothers were acquitted in the case, several Vietnamese boats were destroyed by fire, and Ku Klux Klansmen burned crosses to intimidate the Vietnamese. The conflict became the basis for the recent film Alamo Bay by the French director Louis Malle.

But the conflicts have not stopped the Vietnamese, who have created flourishing businesses. "We have been successful here because we have been hardworking," says Tiet Van Nguyen, 21. His 54-year-old father, Thao, started as a $400-a-month deckhand in the mid-1970s. After borrowing $8,000 from a friend to buy a boat, Thao gradually expanded his business into a three-craft fleet that he later sold to buy a new $95,000 vessel. The five- member family recently bought a Laundromat, and owns a three-bedroom home in the town of Seabrook that cost $47,000 three years ago. A decade after their arrival in America, the onetime refugees are becoming solid members of the Sunbelt's middle class.

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi/New York and Gary Taylor/Houston