Immigrant Entrepreneurs Shape a New Economy
Manuel A. Miranda was 8 when his family immigrated to New York from Bogotá. His parents, who had been lawyers, turned to selling home-cooked food from the trunk of their car. Manuel pitched in after school, grinding corn by hand for traditional Colombian flatbreads called arepas.
Today Mr. Miranda, 32, runs a family business with 16 employees, producing 10 million arepas a year in the Maspeth section of Queens. Now, he says, his eye is on a vast, untapped market: the rest of the country.As the flow of immigrants to suburban and small-town America outpaces the growth of bustling ethnic centers in New York, many foreign-born entrepreneurs like the Mirandas are facing an unfamiliar crossroads. In the city, rising rents and density hamper growth, while swelling ethnic enclaves in the suburbs generate competitors. Yet in other places, opportunity beckons as never before, as immigrants expand the tastes of mainstream America. NINA BERNSTEIN in The New York Times.