From: udcrusd@meaddata.com (Sylvia D'Cruz)
Subject: News report: The  Immigrant Job Specialty
Organization: Mead Data Central, Dayton OH
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 18:59:45 GMT
Distribution: soc.culture.indian

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                  Copyright 1992 The New York Times Company
                               The New York Times

                 January  12, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

An Ethnic Road to Riches: The  Immigrant Job  Specialty

By DONATELLA LORCH
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   When Parmjit Singh left his  job  as a mechanic on a Greek ship in 1981, he
settled in New York City, instead of returning to the family farm in India.
After working three years as a busboy and cook in a Greek restaurant, Mr. Singh
met a fellow Punjabi who owned a gas station in the city.

   "He taught me how to run a station," the 32-year-old  Indian  recalled. "It'
very hard work but it's easy to run -- to order gas, to clean, to keep the

    By 1990, Mr. Singh, with an  Indian  partner, owned 13 gas stations in the
New York area. He has competitors, however -- chiefly, other Punjabi Sikhs who
began buying and working in gas stations in the city at the same time he did,
some of whom now own as many as 40.

Growing Economic Force

     Indian  ownership of gas stations reflects the enormous ethnic
transformation of the city during the last decade. With one million newcomers,
the latest wave of immigration is the second largest in New York City history.
Just a decade ago, gas station ownership usually mirrored the ethnic makeup of
the surrounding neighborhood. But now, about 40 percent of the city's stations
are run or owned by South Asians, estimated Linda Sachs, a spokeswoman for the
the city's Department of Consumer Affairs.

   This turnover in gas station ownership is one of the many images of a
changing New York. While the new immigrants come from a vast spectrum of
countries, with a heavy emphasis on Asian, South American and Caribbean nations
and work in a variety of  jobs,  they have also developed their own specialized
niches, virtually monopolizing certain businesses or professions and slowly
changing the commercial, political and cultural profile of the city.

   The forces that draw immigrant groups to certain occupations and businesses
--  Indians  to gas stations, Koreans and Dominicans to grocery stores and
Afghans to fried chicken places -- are complex and varied. Their occupational
choices are based on factors like skills and values learned in the old country,
the paths followed by fellow immigrants who preceded them, or merely a lack of
more attractive economic options.

   Sociologists agree that there is no universal pattern to these ethnic niches
and that often labor specialization is random and hinges on availability of
positions in certain localities.  Indians,  for example, may be preeminent in
gas stations in New York, but in Los Angeles those business are dominated by a
Korean quasi-monopoly. But once a niche is found, it creates a snowball effect,
gathering in labor from that ethnic group and expanding exponentially.

   The common thread linking all immigrant work niches is the insider's edge on
the profession. "Recruiting through the ethnic network is the most efficient wa
the employer gets labor," explained Roger Waldinger, a sociologist at UCLA who
has studied and written extensively on Koreans and Dominicans in New York City.
Ethnic labor, in particular family labor, is cheap and easily exploited and
there is no linguistic, cultural or discriminatory barrier.

   Many immigrants are self-employed entrepreneurs. More than 85 percent of the
1,600 green grocer stores in the metropolitan area are owned and run by Koreans
sociologists say. The more than 100,000 Koreans who have come to New York also
own novelty shops, beauty salons, liquor stores and dry cleaning.  Indians  and
Pakistanis -- close to 95,000 of whom reside in the city -- have a virtual
monopoly on newsstands. Since the mid-1980's, they have been buying into gas
stations, and their growing presence in the jewelry trade has made them the
second largest ethnic group -- after Hasidic Jews -- in the Diamond District.

   Guyanese -- the fourth largest immigrant group -- can be found throughout th
city's pharmacies and machinery repair shops. They also stand out, along with
the Jamaicans and Irish, in the child-care business. Even the smallest of
immigrant groups, like the Afghans and the Senegalese, have carved out their ow
niches. There are fewer than 4,000 Afghans in the city -- almost all war
refugees -- yet they own more than 200 fast-food chicken restaurants, Afghan
businessmen say, in particular a non-franchised chain of more than 40 called
Kennedy's Fried Chicken. The Senegalese, many of them already traders by
profession, came to the United States via Europe and have prospered hawking a
variety of wares on street corners throughout the city.

Korean Success: Toil and Innovation

    One of the the most visible successes has been the Koreans. An estimated
100,000 Koreans have come to the metropolitan area since the 1970's and 65
percent of Korean families own at least one business, said Pyong Gap Min, a
professor of sociology at Queens College, who is a specialist on Koreans in the
United States. "No other group is as highly self-employed," Professor Min said.

   Few Korean green grocers owned such stores in their homeland. But they
arrived in the United States at a propitious time, when many Greeks, Italians
and Jews were leaving the grocery business. Most were highly educated
professionals with limited English skills and no business experience. But they
had money to invest. The grocery stores were attractive because, although they
required long, hard hours, they could be run with only basic shards of English.
In the United States, they revamped and spruced up the stores, filling the
demand for items beyond the basics of the old grocery store. New immigrants
learned the business from fellow Koreans before they invested in their own
stores.

   Professor Min said that the first Korean to open a green grocery in
Manhattan, To Sup Kwak, invested about $5,000 to start his business in 1970.
Although Koreans in New York City were already firmly entrenched in the trade o
Korean products, green grocers were their first businesses not tied to the
products of their homeland, Professor Min said.

   The snowballing success of Korean grocers is due in part to an extensive and
well-organized support system. New arrivals can rely on a 500-page Korean
business directory, as well as dozens of business groups, including the Korean
Green Grocer Association. When black residents of Flatbush, Brooklyn, organized
a boycott of two Korean grocers in 1990, for instance, fellow Korean grocers pu
up money to help the stores remain in business. In the last several years, as a
visible testimony to the phenomenon of ethnic succession, Koreans have begun
hiring Central Americans and Mexicans to perform the menial tasks in their
stores.

   Anderson Han, 41, has owned his green grocery on the corner of Union Street
and 41st Avenue in Flushing for three-and-a-half years. His story reflects the
successes of many Korean immigrants.

   Most of Mr. Han's 18 years in the United States have been spent working
six-day weeks in the grocery business. In 1973, after his father bought a fruit
store in Manhattan for $30,000, Mr. Han dropped out of college to help the
family.

   "Before he died, my father wanted each of my six brothers and sisters to own
a grocery store," Mr. Han said. The dream was realized, with each sibling ownin
a green grocery.

   In 1988, Mr. Han bought his store for about $200,000 from a Greek-American.
His first year, Mr. Han and his wife worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
In a good month, they make a net profit of about $4,000. He has been held up an
robbed. But like many first-generation Koreans who have succeeded in their
business, Mr. Han says he will not allow either of his two children to work in
the store and wants them to become doctors or lawyers. Already he is employing
two Central Americans because they are cheaper to hire than Korean laborers.

 Indian  Immigrants: A Society Recreated

     Indian  immigrants offer a stark contrast to the Korean experience.
Although most  Indians  who came to the United States in the 1960's and 1970's
were professionals who spoke English, the arrivals since then are not as
well-educated. Unlike many Korean immigrants, who came from the cities, many
 Indian  immigrants come from small towns or the countryside. As  Indian
families have reunited in the United States, many have recreated the extensive
social and kin networks of their homeland, said Madhulika Khandelwal, a
sociologist in the Asian American Center at Queens College.

   For instance, various communities in India are devoted to certain
occupations, a characteristic reflected in the professions  Indians  pursue in
the United States. One example is the  Indians  working in the Diamond
District in Manhattan, many of whom are Gujerati Jains, reknowed as traders and
merchants throughout India. Most of the  Indians  involved in the motel
business, which is completely built around the extended family network, carry
the last name Patel, a sub-caste from the province of Gujerat that is known for
its entrepreneurial expertise.

   And most  Indians  in the gas station business are Punjabi Sikhs.

   In India, Sikhs are known as farmers but also as transporters and mechanics.
The largest fleet of trucks in India is owned by Sikhs who control more than 80
percent of the bus service throughout the country, said Baldev Singh, a former
lawyer who now owns several gas stations in Long Island as well as the fifth
largest truck stop in the United States in Jessup, Md.

   "It is not sheer coincidence that they are taking up these  jobs, " Mrs.
Khandelwal explained. "Sikhs are very enterprising and they don't mind going
into areas where no one else will work."

   At Parmjit Singh's Mobil station at 125th Street between Broadway and the
Hudson River, the workers -- all Sikhs -- seem almost numbed by the long hours
and grueling work. They earn $300 a week and save half of it. "All I know is
this gas station and the Punjab," said Amrit Singh, a clock merchant who has
been in New York for only five months and spends his only day off washing
clothes, buying groceries and sleeping.

   Parmjit Singh's gas stations are held up an average of two times a month. Tw
 Indian  employees have been shot and killed during stickups, Mr. Singh said.
But the station still makes a net profit of about $4,000 a month. "They see me
and they want to be like me," Parmjit Singh said of his workers.

Afghan Refugees: Evading Barriers

    In the vast maze of cultures, Afghans offer yet another insight into the
ethnic division of labor. One of the smallest and most recent groups of
immigrants in the city, they are refugees from the fierce decade-long war in
Afghanistan. Many of them lack higher education, trade skills, and have little
knowledge of English. They are generally poor when they arrive. And unlike the
Koreans and the  Indians,  their struggle for survival has had an impact on onl
a very specialized part of the city's economy.

   In the last decade, with more than 200 stores, the Afghans have become
specialists in the fast-food chicken business. To circumvent language and
discrimination barriers, even their carpenters and chicken suppliers they use
are Afghans. Their niche in the business originated in 1979, when Abdul Karim
Halemi, a student from Kandahar in Southern Afghanistan, got his first  job  wa
in the kitchen at Kansas Fried Chicken. A year later, he opened the first
Kennedy's Fried Chicken. Now there are 40 unfranchised restaurants with that
name -- all owned by Afghans, Mr. Halemi said.

   Mr. Halemi said he and other established Afghan immigrants in New York lead
the new arrivals by the hand through the chicken fast-food business. The tough
part is teaching them the intricacies of running a business in New York City.
"It's like a formula," Mr. Halemi said. "We tell them how to go to the building
department, how to save money by cutting and installing their own bulletproof
glass."

   "You have to have some connection with somebody to succeed," said Mr. Halemi
who still works at his restaurant on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens behind the
protection of bulletproof glass. "We all know each other. When the new ones com
to the store, they sit. They watch. They learn and then they work."
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Sylvia D. D'Cruz                                
Mead Data Central                               Systems & Product Technology
Bldg. VI, 9595 Springboro Pike                          udcrusd@meaddata.com
Miamisburg, Ohio 45342                                        (513) 865-6800   
                                               
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