Day: October 26, 2013

Portland, ME: Do African immigrant-entrepreneurs benefit Maine economy?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how many times lately I’ve seen stories like this one (especially as the push is on for Congress to get the amnesty bill done), but frankly the premise that immigrants are growing businesses faster and with more success than Americans makes no sense to me.

26-year old Somali woman owns a grocery store in Portland. How many 26-year old Americans have the money to open such an enterprise? Photo Bangor Daily News

How does a Somali with a small grocery or African trinket shop in Portland stay afloat?  Is it done with extensive government supported help like micro-loans, or other special loans?  Is there a little money-transfer operation going on in the back room? I can definitely see how immigrant-owned and managed convenience stores survive by tapping into the lucrative fraud of the Food Stamp program.

But, has someone done a study to back-up this oft-repeated claim that immigrants run stores/restaurants better and with more economic success than Americans?

Here is the story that got me wondering about this again, from the Bangor Daily News (emphasis mine):

PORTLAND, Maine — As the rest of Maine’s business community struggled through the Great Recession and its recovery, one sector of the local economy remained relatively unscathed and could, with the proper support, provide the state with a much-needed economic boost, according to experts.

Maine’s immigrant-owned businesses — situated mostly in the retail and food-service sectors — were for the most part insulated from the effects of the recession because their communities serve as a dedicated customer base, one that continued to grow throughout the recession, according to Charles Colgan, a professor at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service. Maine’s foreign-born population has grown by 16.5 percent in the last 11 years, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

“They may have played a larger role in the business sector over the last few years than you would think, given the size of the stores and businesses,” Colgan said.

Though hard data isn’t available, Colgan suspects that immigrant-owned businesses in southern Maine’s retail sector are faring better than the state’s retail sector as a whole. He estimates that perhaps half of the newly established small retail businesses in Portland over the last few years may be immigrant-owned.

Immigrant-owned businesses also hold untapped potential that, given the right tools and a concerted effort, could help the state bounce back from the recent economic slump, according to Claude Rwaganje, founder of Community Financial Literacy in Portland.

There is lots more, read it all.

Rwaganje’s Community Financial Literacy is a modest operation taking in about $110,000 annually (Form 990 here).  Rwaganje takes home about half of that in salary and benefits.  Funds come from these donors.

Apparently the Portland Chamber of Commerce is interested in doing a study, but I sure would like to know if anyone (without a political bias!) has done a study of this sort.  Please let me know if you know of such a study!

For new readers:  We have dozens and dozens of posts about Maine.  Just type ‘Maine’ into our search function. But, a 2009 post continues to be one of our most-read posts over the years—-Maine the welfare magnet.

Kenyan officials say Westgate slaughter planned from refugee camp

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp. It would be pretty easy to hide out here and plan more attacks on Kenya. Some of the refugees arriving in America come from Dadaab.

Kenya is home to the largest number of Somali ‘refugees’ anywhere in the world.  Security officials are pointing a finger at refugee camps within their border as the planning area for the Somali slaughter of innocents at Nairobi’s upscale Westgate mall last month.

Readers may remember that we reported last December that Kenya told the UNHCR to get out and take their Somalis with them.  This article mentions that and reports that a Kenyan high court stopped the plan which initially only said that illegal Somalis in Kenya needed to get back to the camps (some are living freely throughout Kenya).

From AP at Kentucky.com (hat tip: Robin)

NAIROBI, Kenya — Some refugees fleeing insecurity from neighboring countries have abused Kenyan hospitality by planning terror attacks against the country, Kenya’s internal security minister said Friday, in an apparent reference to last month’s terrorist attack on an upscale mall which killed more than 67 people.

Joseph Ole Lenku said Kenya’s government started repatriating Somali refugees as part of remedial steps to prevent repeat attacks. Refugees from war-ravaged Somalia make up the most of the 600,000 refugees in Kenya, he said.

“We have welcomed with open arms refugees fleeing from insecurity from neighboring countries but as it turned out some of these refugees have abused our hospitality and kindness to plan and launch terror attacks from the safety of refugee camps. This cannot and shall not be allowed to continue anymore,” he said.

Westgate attack planned from refugee camp:

Last week, Asman Kamama, the chairman of parliament’s Administration and National Security committee, said that it was confirmed that the Westgate Mall attack was planned from a refugee camp in Kenya. He spoke after a meeting with Kenyan security chiefs.

This is edict from December after Somali crime and violence throughout Kenya was escalating (it was subsequently over-turned by a Kenyan court):

A government statement said that due to that “unbearable and uncontrollable threat to national security,” the government decided that all refugees and asylum seekers from Somalia must return to the large refugee camp complex known as Dadaab, a seemingly endless expanse of refugee housing on the sands of Kenya close to the Somali border. More than 400,000 refugees live in Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in the world.

We wrote about Dadaab earlier this month, here.

Just a reminder, the US resettled 7,608 Somalis to the US in FY2013.

Bulgaria again and an example of a border fence success story (for Greece)!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Build a fence, Bulgaria! Build a fence!

Update!  What do you know, Bulgaria is building a fence, check it out here.

As I scoured my alerts this morning I see there are several about Bulgaria struggling to cope with the Syrian refugee flow coming across their border from Turkey.  Previously I speculated that the flow out of Turkey toward Bulgaria instead of Greece was due to Greece’s strengthened border security.  This article confirms that.

See all of our recent coverage of poor Bulgaria’s predicament, here.

From Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (emphasis mine):

About 100 people are arriving at Bulgaria’s border with Turkey daily, and the numbers are rapidly increasing. In the past, Bulgaria received, on average, 1,000 migrants and asylum seekers per year. This year, more than 6,500 have arrived, leaving officials scrambling to find housing and funds to accommodate them.

Arrivals have increased steadily since August, and at the current rate, the ministry of the interior estimates it will have received 11,000 to 15,000 by year’s end – the vast majority Syrian.

“We see that the government is overwhelmed, and that the reception capacity has been depleted,” said Cheshirkov.

Smugglers who used to lead migrants from Turkey into Greece are increasingly moving them to Bulgaria instead, in part due to the construction of a 10.5km fence at one of the most popular crossing points along the Turkish-Greek border.

Bulgaria, a country of just 7.5 million people, is one of the poorest in the European Union.

“We are just at the beginning of this crisis,” Vasil Marinov, deputy minister of the interior, told IRIN.

Of course no one ever says a word about how Turkey, which is financially and militarily in a better situation, should be stopping them on their side of the border!