The story below is from our May/June 2019 issue. For the full issue Subscribe today, view our FREE interactive digital edition or download our FREE iOS app!
Editor's Note: This story kicks off our first-ever blog series discussing Immigration in the Roanoke Valley.
Read more about one refugee's incredible story of starting her life over in Roanoke here.
Read more about the Immigrant Experience here.
More blog posts to come as we continue the conversation thanks to our writers Christina Nifong, Anne Sampson and Brian Bongard.
Growing contributions from immigrants in the region have made a substantial impact to our local economy.
When Santiago Cruz arrived in the U.S. in 1992, at the age of 19, he was a pretty typical immigrant. He’s from Honduras, in Central America, where opportunity was in short supply. His sister already lived in the Roanoke area, which made it logical for him to come here. He spoke no English. The need for work led him to food service, and he wound up at Sake House, a Japanese restaurant in Salem, where he was eventually offered the opportunity to learn to make sushi.
Aptitude helped him become an expert sushi chef. Ambition led him to open Wasabi’s, a popular sushi restaurant on the City Market. Wasabi’s has been a lunch and dinner anchor on the market for years. Cruz now employs other immigrants from Honduras, China and Cambodia, as well as Americans. He has three full-time and seven part-time employees.
“I’m lucky that my father taught us to work hard,” says Cruz of himself and his seven siblings. “This was my dream. To achieve something.” He saved money for 13 years to open his own restaurant.
Anne Sampson
Santiago Cruz
“It was scary,” he continues. “The restaurant business is very risky. I was afraid to make a mistake and lose everything.”
Among the negative ideas current in the popular mind regarding immigrants to the U.S., both legal and unauthorized, is that they represent a drain on a community’s resources. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a tax-exempt special interest organization which advocates strict, low caps on immigration, published a study in 2017 which estimated that each illegal immigrant cost the state of Virginia $4,893 in services annually.
That same year, the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis (CIFA) released a report touting immigrants to Virginia as “pillars of our prosperity,” citing age, education, job skills, tax contributions and entrepreneurship as factors.
Immigrants in Virginia tend to be of prime working age, between 25 and 44, have higher educational attainment than the national average and are shifting from blue-collar to white-collar jobs. They also tend to be naturalized U.S. citizens, living here at least five years, often more than 10 years. Many have passed a citizenship test and they pay taxes.
Like Cruz, they often open businesses. According to CIFA, nearly 11 percent of immigrant workers in Virginia were self-employed, compared to 7 percent of U.S.-born workers. The number of immigrants who own incorporated businesses has increased 20 percent since 2007. Many of those are “Main Street” businesses – the grocery stores, restaurants and gas stations we all frequently visit. While immigrants make up about 12 percent of the population in Virginia, they own 34 percent of the Main Street businesses, serving as catalysts to attract further commerce.
“Immigrants are more likely to start their own businesses, and more likely to succeed,” says Beth Lutjen, executive director of Roanoke’s star diversity organization, Local Colors. “They just work hard, pool their money, hire family members and pull together as a group.”
Lutjen paints a picture that reflects American small business of an earlier age, when Mom and Pop owned a grocery store and lived in a little apartment in the back, a model that is still often found in other countries.
“If you give an immigrant a house, they’ll fix up the main floor, put their business there, and live in the basement,” Lutjen says. “An American would spend money on the main floor and live there, and put their business in the basement. Their definition of what you ‘have to have’ to live is different.”
Overall, Virginia’s population is aging. An aging population means a shrinking tax base, and a shrinking tax base means tighter budgets and fewer services, as well as fewer people to do the work.
That’s particularly true of the rural counties southwest of Roanoke, many of which, as a result of declining coal and textile-based economies, are also losing their younger residents to job opportunities elsewhere. The death rate now outstrips the birth rate in Southwest Virginia.
Immigrants are one way rural communities are revitalizing. According to an NPR report by Melissa Block (July 16, 2018), Galax, that bastion of Blue Ridge Mountain culture, has one of the fastest growing Hispanic populations in the state. A third of the town’s high school students are from Mexico or Honduras. Ten of 11 starters on their championship basketball team are Hispanic.
“There’s not a lot of folks around this area that I know of that will go and do what these Mexicans do,” Stevie Barr of Barr’s Fiddle Shop told Block. “They work from daylight to dawn.” He also believes people should enter the country through legal ports.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the vast majority of immigrants in metro Roanoke come from Asia (31.9 percent) and Latin America (30.2 percent). A drive down Williamson Road supports those figures, as the street is lined with Asian and Hispanic groceries and popular restaurants. Many store owners are happy to answer questions and give advice on foods unfamiliar to the U.S.-born shopper.
“They’re happy to share their culture,” says Lutjen. “They’re delighted when someone shows an interest. And they’re very interested in being here, in learning American culture.”
“My first goal was to learn English,” says Cruz. He had no formal training, relying instead on immersion among English speakers. His employer at Sake House encouraged customers to engage him in conversation.
“I’m still learning,” he smiles, 27 years later. “It’s a difficult language.”
Although actual dollar figures aren’t available for the economic impact of immigrant-owned businesses in Roanoke, there are estimates of national impact. These estimates can vary widely from one organization to another. For example, the Center for American Progress estimates that eliminating workers and business owners from three countries – El Salvador, Haiti and Honduras – could negatively impact the U.S. economy to the tune of $160 billion over ten years. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center puts that figure at $45 billion, also estimating a loss of $7 billion to Medicare and Social Security.
“I work all the time, six days a week, 96 hours,” says Cruz. “Sunday, I come in and prepare for the week.” Even after nearly 30 years of living, working and starting a family in the U.S., he retains the air of someone who can’t believe his good fortune.
“In Honduras, everything was hard,” he says. “Here, you see the opportunity you would never have otherwise.”
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