Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World Highlight

A disproportionate number of post-1965 Asian immigrants gravitated toward small-business ownership for a whole slew of reasons: If they bought one, immigration rules permitted individuals to enter the country regardless of their point-system scores; small businesses allowed families to informally employ their own members at low wages, lending the enterprises a competitive advantage; as their own bosses, immigrants didn’t exaggerate the necessity of English language skills, as an anglophone employer might; members of a generation of white ethnic small-business owners were nearing the ends of their lives after having successfully assimilated their children into professional jobs and felt compelled to sell their shops; educated professionals who couldn’t traverse the American credentials system had access to modest loans and pooled capital from their community networks; suburban expansion in the South and West created demand for small concerns to fill out the new strip malls. Low-capital, labor-intensive businesses such as restaurants, doughnut bakeries, small groceries, auto-repair garages, newsstands, motels, nail salons, liquor shops, and convenience stores were viable enough, but small profit margins meant that self- and family exploitation was the only way to make any money. Ronald Takaki calls it an “opportune moment” to become a shopkeeper, and yet he also notes that a “study of Korean business owners showed that more than 90 percent of them worked harder and lived more frugally here than they had in Korea.”