[Mr. Sanchez is part of a small class of immigrants who arrived in the United States
By Kirk Semple
 |
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Felix Sanchez de la Vega Guzman, 66, turned selling tortillas
on the street into a $19 million food business.
|
Yet Mr.
Sanchez has lived the great American success story. He turned a business
selling tortillas on the street into a $19 million food manufacturing empire
that threaded together the Mexican diaspora from coast to coast and reached back
into Mexico
Mr.
Sanchez is part of a small class of immigrants who arrived in the United States
Many have
rooted their businesses in big cities with immigrant populations large enough to
insulate them from everyday situations that demand English. After gaining
traction in their own communities, they have used the tools of modern
communication, transportation and commerce to tap far-flung resources and
exploit markets in similar enclaves around the country and the world.
“The
entire market is Hispanic,” Mr. Sanchez said of his business. “You don’t need
English.” A deal, he said, is only a cheap long-distance phone call or a few
key strokes on the computer away. “All in Spanish,” he added.
Mr.
Sanchez, 66, said he always wanted to learn English but had not had time for
lessons.
“I
couldn’t concentrate,” he said in a recent interview, in Spanish. “In addition,
all the people around me were speaking in Spanish, too.”
In New York City China South Korea
Among them
is Zhang Yulong, 39, who emigrated from China New York
Kim Ki
Chol, 59, who arrived in the United States from South Korea in 1981, opened a
clothing accessories store in Brooklyn and went on to become a successful retailer,
real estate investor and civic leader in the region’s Korean diaspora.
In the United States
Nancy
Foner, a sociology professor at the City University of New York who has written
widely on immigration, said it was clear that modern
technology had made a big difference in the ability of immigrant entrepreneurs
with poor or no English skills to expand their companies nationally and
globally.
“It wasn’t
impossible — but much, much harder — for immigrants to operate businesses
around the globe a hundred years ago, when there were no jet planes, to say
nothing of cellphones and computers,” Ms. Foner said.
Advocates
for the movement sometimes known as Official English have long pressed for legislation
mandating English as the official language of government, arguing that a common
language is essential for the country’s cohesion and for immigrant assimilation
and success.
But
stories like Mr. Sanchez’s, though certainly unusual, seem to suggest that an
entrepreneur can do just fine without English — especially with the aid of
modern technology, not to mention determination and ingenuity.
For Mr.
Sanchez, who became an American citizen in 1985, one anxious moment came when
he had to pass his naturalization test. The law requires that applicants be
able to read, write and speak basic English.
But Mr.
Sanchez and other entrepreneurs said that the test, at least at the time they
took it, had been rudimentary and that they had muddled through it.
Mr.
Sanchez immigrated to the United States Puebla New
York New York
In 1978,
Mr. Sanchez and his wife, Carmen, took $12,000 in savings, bought a tortilla
press and an industrial dough mixer in Los Angeles, hauled the machinery back
to the East Coast and installed it in a warehouse in Passaic, N.J. Mr. Sanchez
spent his days driving a forklift at an electrical-equipment factory and spent
his evenings and nights making tortillas and selling them door-to-door in
Latino neighborhoods around New York City.
His
company, Puebla Foods, grew with the Mexican population, and he was soon
distributing his tortillas and other Mexican products, like dried chilies, to
bodegas and restaurants throughout the Northeast. At its peak, his enterprise
had factories in cities all across North
America , including Los Angeles Miami Pittsburgh Toronto Washington
He has
relied heavily on a bilingual staff, which at times has included his three
children, born and raised in New Jersey
Mr. Zhang,
the cellphone accessories entrepreneur, said his lack of English had not been a
handicap. “The only obstacle I have is if I get too tired,” said Mr. Zhang, who
also owns a property development company and an online retail firm.
In 2001,
Mr. Zhang set up a wholesale business in cellphone accessories in Manhattan China United States Canada Latin
America .
His
business boomed, and he opened warehouses in Los Angeles , New York Washington New York
Mr. Zhang
now lives in a big house in Little Neck, Queens , with
his wife, three daughters and parents, and drives a Lexus S.U.V. He has not
applied for citizenship, preferring to remain a legal permanent resident and
maintain his Chinese citizenship, which spares him the bother of securing a
Chinese visa when he goes to China
While he
can speak rudimentary English — he rates his comprehension at 30 percent — he
conducts nearly his entire life in Chinese. His employees speak the languages
of trading partners: English, Spanish, Creole, Korean and French, not to mention
multiple Chinese dialects.
Over the
course of a lengthy interview, he gamely tried on several occasions to converse
in English, but each time he ran into roadblocks and, with a shrug of
resignation, resumed speaking through a translator in Mandarin.
Mr. Kim,
the Korean retailer, recalled that when he opened his first store in Brooklyn ,
nearly his entire clientele was Afro-Caribbean and African-American, and his
customers spoke no Korean.
“You don’t
have to have a big conversation,” he recalled. “You can make gestures.”
While his
holdings have grown, he has also formed or led associations and organizations
that focus on empowering the Korean population in the United States New York
“The
success of my life is not only that I make a lot of money,” he said, “but that
I make a lot of Korean people’s lives better.”
Yet he
admitted that he was embarrassed by his inability to speak English. He has gone
so far as to buy some English-tutorial computer programs, but for years, they
have gone mostly unused.
