Immigrant Business Owners: A Case Study of Vietnamese Entrepreneurs in America

Abstract

ABSTRACT Two hundred and seventy nine Vietnamese American entrepreneurs in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, San Jose and Orange County, California, and Houston, Texas were surveyed. Findings show that the main reasons for business ownership are independence, job security, past experience and training. Maintaining personal freedom, achieving personal satisfaction and growth are also cited as motivators. Regarding the factors contributing to their business success, Vietnamese American entrepreneurs indicated that hard work, charisma, and friendliness to customers are the most crucial variables. Good location, appropriate training, good customer service and family support are also the leading conditions to business success. Among the problems encountered by Vietnamese entrepreneurs, excessive competition, lack of formal management training, unsafe location, unreliable employees and discrimination from customers are also reported. INTRODUCTION The contribution of immigrant businesses to the U.S. economy is believed to be very significant. It has been reported that immigrant entrepreneurs employ 12 percent of the total U.S. workforce and generate $67 billion of the $577 billion in U.S. business income (McLoone, 2008). Experts say that immigrant businesses have also changed the economic landscape of this country. In New York City, immigrants account for 36 percent of the population but represent 49 percent of all self-employed workers. Between 2000 and 2005, immigrant business owners in Illinois created 27.7 percent of all net jobs in the health diagnosing sector (Tran, 2007). Data shows that California's immigrant businesses contribute 25 percent, or almost $20 billion, of the state's business income (McLoone, 2008). The impact of immigrant businesses on the U. S economy is well recognized, and the task of starting new businesses and creating jobs by immigrants outpace U.S. born citizens (McLoone, 2008). The need for creating an environment conducive to the advancement of small and medium sized enterprises among immigrant communities is therefore imperative. To further this purpose, a better understanding of motivations for business ownership, success factors and problems encountered by small business owners in general, and immigrant entrepreneurs, in particular is critical. This paper attempts to focus on Vietnamese small business owners, the newly arrived immigrants to the United States. Emphasis will be on their reasons for becoming business owners, factors leading to their success and challenges faced when opening and running their business. The collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 created an exodus of approximately 3 million people who fled their homeland and scattered around the world. To date there are 1.6 million (Wikipedia, 2007) Vietnamese refugees resettled in the United States. It has been reported that there were only a handful of Vietnamese who lived in America before 1975. They were primarily students who came for their education, members of Vietnamese diplomatic corps, and spouses of American civilian and military personnel who served in Vietnam. Recent statistics provided by the State Department showed that the number of Vietnamese refugees in America has grown to 1.64 million people in 2007, as compared to 1.2 million in 2000 (Wikipedia, 2009). This figure has ranked Vietnamese Americans as the fourth largest minority group in the U.S. behind the Chinese (3.53 million), Filipinos (3.05 million), and Indians (2.77 million). A majority of these Vietnamese refugees live in metropolitan areas in the West and the Southwest, especially in Orange County and San Jose, CA, and in Houston, TX. Some of them have also settled in Philadelphia, PA, Alexandria, VA, Minneapolis, MN, and Seattle, WA. Quickly assimilating into mainstream American society, quite a few Vietnamese refugees have opened their own businesses. For instance, in Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, there are more than 5,000 Vietnamese American business owners, according to De Tran, publisher of the weekly Viet Mercury (Texeira, 2005). …