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HIV Undetectable in 2 Men After Bone Marrow Transplants
StudyBy Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay THURSDAY, July 26, 2012 - (HealthDay News)
This article is for yor personal use, only
Following bone marrow transplants, two men infected with HIV no longer have any traces of the AIDS-causing virus in their lymphocytes, researchers report.
Lymphocytes are a type of white blood cell and are a key part of the immune system.
The U.S. researchers suspect that bone marrow transplantation along with continuation ofantiretroviral therapy resulted in the dramatic effects evident eight months post-transplant. They are scheduled to present these preliminary findings Thursday at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C.
HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy often achieve "undetectable viral loads," meaning there are no virus particles in their blood. But they still have latent HIV in their lymphocytes, and if antiretroviral therapy were discontinued, the latent HIV could reactivate.
But having no traces of HIV in these white blood cells is an indication that this "reservoir" of latent HIV may have been eliminated, the researchers believe.
At this point, they are far from saying these patients are cured. But the findings are "exciting," said Dr. Savita Pahwa, director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, who was not involved with the study.
"Every hint you get that it's possible to wipe out the reservoir needs to be investigated," she said.
"Eliminating the reservoir is the key to the cure," said Pahwa. She also stressed that it would only be possible to say these patients were "functionally cured" if the virus did not rebound when the patients went off antiretroviral therapy.
The two men whose cases are described in the paper underwent chemotherapy for blood cancers before receiving stem cell transplants. One had his transplant two years ago; the other, four years ago. Both also developed graft-versus-host disease (when transplanted cells attack the host cells) and continued with their antiretroviral medications throughout and after the transplant procedures.
Any of these factors could theoretically explain their HIV-free status, but the bone marrow transplantation combined with antiretroviral therapy seems the most likely explanation, said the study authors.
"We believe the transplanted cells killed off and replaced all of the patients' own lymphocytes, including the infected cells, and the donor cells were protected from becoming infected themselves by the antiretroviral therapy they were taking throughout the transplant period," said study senior author Dr. Daniel Kuritzkes, chief of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Graft-versus-host disease also probably played a role, he said. "The replacement of host cells by donor cells is itself a form of graft-versus-host reaction," Kuritzkes explained.
But the only way to verify that the transplant plus antiretroviral therapy can eradicate HIV is to take the patients off their medication regimens.
That would be the "next logical step," said Kuritzkes, adding that this would require patient consent and adherence to ethics protocols.
But even if the transplant procedure were found to eliminate the reservoir of latent HIV cells, bone marrow transplantation is a very risky procedure. Kuritzkes said he does not "foresee bone marrow transplantation being performed on otherwise healthy HIV-infected patients who are doing well on [antiretroviral therapy]."
Kuritzkes and his colleagues are continuing to enroll and follow HIV-positive patients who have undergone bone marrow transplants as part of a larger study.
This preliminary study contains echoes of the so-called "Berlin Patient," who has no detectable HIV cells in his blood five years after a stem cell transplant for leukemia.
Like the two men discussed in the current paper, the Berlin Patient -- Timothy Ray Brown of Seattle -- also had been diagnosed with HIV and also underwent chemotherapy (for acute myeloid leukemia) and developed graft-versus-host disease.
But, unlike the current patients, Brown received his stem cell transplant from a donor who had a rare genetic mutation that increases immunity against the most common form of HIV. He remained HIV-free after discontinuing antiretroviral therapy.
The two men described here received donor cells, which were "fully susceptible" to HIV, Kuritzkes said. This raises the possibility that a cure may be possible even when the donor does not have this gene mutation, he said.
Because this research has not been peer-reviewed and published in a medical journal, the data and conclusions should be considered preliminary.
More information
Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more on HIV/AIDS.
__________________________________
(click green U.S. 'genius' visa
so-called genius visas known as O-1s and EB-1s
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters), 6/28/12
- Shera Bechard, the Canadian-born former girlfriend of Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner, would not be an obvious candidate for the special visas that the U.S. government reserves for "individuals with extraordinary ability."Playboy magazine named Bechard Miss November in 2010, and she also started an online photo-sharing craze called "Frisky Friday." Neither seems quite on the level of an "internationally recognized award, such as a Nobel Prize," which the government cites as a possible qualification.
But Los Angeles immigration lawyer Chris Wright argued that Bechard's accomplishments earned her a slot. The government ultimately agreed.
That kind of success has put Wright on the map as the go-to visa fixer for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It also highlights the use of so-called genius visas known as O-1s and EB-1s, which have largely escaped political controversy and are now the immigration solution of choice for many entrepreneurs.
[Related: 102-year-old man becomes U.S. citizen]
As many immigration lawyers see it, the paucity of immigration options for the most entrepreneurial foreigners mean they must use any avenue they can. This approach, along with seeming flexibility in Washington on what constitutes "extraordinary ability," means the O-1 is gaining traction in technology circles. Wider use could ultimately land it in political trouble.
For example, the H-1B visa, which allows employers to hire foreigners temporarily in certain specialized fields like technology, has drawn accusations from union groups and others that companies use it to bring in lower-skilled labor.
The O-1 visa allows individuals of "extraordinary ability" to come to the United States for up to three years, and can be extended. British journalist Piers Morgan used one when he replaced Larry King on his late-night TV show, Wright said.
The EB-1 is similar, but leads to a green card and permanent residency rather than a temporary stay, with "extraordinary ability" being one of the ways to qualify - along with being an outstanding professor or researcher, or a multinational executive.
[Related: Ariz. implements immigration law as feds push back]
Foreign entrepreneurs have another option - the Immigrant Investor Program, or EB-5 visa - but it requires a capital investment of at least $500,000 and the creation of at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
By contrast, no proof of personal wealth or investment in the United States is required for the O-1 or the EB-1.
There is also no cap on the number of O-1s that the government can award each year; about 12,280 were approved in 2011, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said, up from 9,478 in 2006. It issued about 25,000 EB-1s last year, below their cap of 40,000.
The H-1B is much more popular. Applications hit their annual cap of 85,000 earlier this month.
FALLBACK POSITION
While high-profile artists and entertainers have long used the O-1s, they are now becoming a fallback for businessmen and technologists who cannot get H1-Bs.
Josh Buckley, a 20-year-old British-born entrepreneur and a client of Wright's, is among the new crop of Internet entrepreneurs to win an O-1 visa. He applied after starting a few small companies, including one he sold at age 15 for a sum reaching the low six figures, he says.
He got his O-1 last year after lining up letters of recommendation from luminaries including Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Apple Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Buckley, whose MinoMonsters gaming company is backed by Andreessen, saw little choice other than the O-1. The H-1B was off limits because it usually does not go to people who work for themselves. The O-1, unlike most H-1Bs, also does not require a college education--a key feature for the ever-younger entrepreneurs flocking to Silicon Valley.
[Related: Six things to know about U.S. immigration]
Except when it comes to the O-1, visa officials "just don't understand the concept of someone being skilled without 12 years of experience or a bachelor's degree," says John Collison, a 22-year-old Irishman. He dropped out of Harvard University to work on Stripe, the payments company he co-founded with his brother, Patrick.
Like Buckley, he met Wright through the prestigious Silicon Valley start-up incubator known as Y Combinator. He won his O-1 in December 2010 and now has permanent residency status-- as does Buckley.
Wright, himself a South African immigrant, dismisses the notion that some of his clients might not rise to the level of "extraordinary ability."
"There's nothing in those regulations that requires you to be a genius," he says. "It's quite condescending to say, ‘Oh, the idiot Playboy Playmates, they don't qualify.'"
At the end of 2010, Bechard posted the first "Frisky Friday" photo on the Twitter microblogging service. Now young women all over the world tweet scantily-clad pictures of themselves on Fridays, with Playboy selecting a weekly winner.
Immigration officials "want to give (a visa) to someone who shows business skills," Bechard says. She also threw in such qualifications as her role as a mute Russian in a 2009 movie, "Sweet Karma," which won her a best actress award at the cult Fantastic Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
QUALIFICATION QUESTION
Many of Wright's young technology clients have had limited time to show they have "risen to the very top of the field of endeavor," as O-1 regulations state.
But quality rather than longevity is the key, Wright says. USCIS rules require extraordinary ability -- demonstrated by "sustained national or international acclaim" -- that he says his clients can prove with awards and testaments from leading players in their field.
The visas are "a lot of work," he said. "You can't just crank them out at high volume."
Asked about how it decides to grant O-1s, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service spokeswoman said: "USCIS decides each benefit request on a case-by-case basis relying on the law and evidence provided for that case. There are a variety of factors that influence the number of visa applications received and approved from year to year."
Wright says he hopes that one day, immigration reform will make it easier for talented immigrants, especially entrepreneurs, to come to this country. That is a widespread goal in Silicon Valley, where immigrant entrepreneurs have helped start many leading companies. Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin, for example, came to the United States from the Soviet Union when he was a child.
The immigrant entrepreneurs say that far from taking away jobs, they are creating them by founding companies that may go on to employ hundreds or even thousands of people.
They have managed to find allies even among the harshest critics of H-1Bs.
"The O-1 is one of the few visas we support," said Kim Berry, a spokesman for the Programmers Guild, which favors the suspension of the H-1B program. "When they need to bring in the best and the brightest and the entrepreneurs, that's the only visa that helps America."
Indeed, efforts to make it easier for educated and enterprising foreigners to stay in the United States generally enjoy bi-partisan support in Washington. The complicated status of the immigration issue as a whole, though, has blocked any changes.
"The issue is pretty well understood," said Steve Case, the founder of AOL and now head of the venture capital firm Revolution LLC. "But there is this skepticism around the politics of immigration."
Thus the O-1 will probably remain a key channel for many immigrant entrepreneurs - and it does carry some additional side benefits.
British-born Scott Allison, co-founder of a software company called Teamly, was returning to the United States earlier this month and enjoyed a rare welcome from customs officials after they caught a glimpse of his new O-1 visa.
"'Wow, you must be really awesome,'" he recalls one commenting before waving him through. "I'm like, 'Gee, thanks.'"
(Reporting By Sarah McBride; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Von Ahn)
@yahoonews on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
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_________________________________________
so-called genius visas known as O-1s and EB-1s
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters), 6/28/12
- Shera Bechard, the Canadian-born former girlfriend of Playboy Enterprises founder Hugh Hefner, would not be an obvious candidate for the special visas that the U.S. government reserves for "individuals with extraordinary ability."Playboy magazine named Bechard Miss November in 2010, and she also started an online photo-sharing craze called "Frisky Friday." Neither seems quite on the level of an "internationally recognized award, such as a Nobel Prize," which the government cites as a possible qualification.
But Los Angeles immigration lawyer Chris Wright argued that Bechard's accomplishments earned her a slot. The government ultimately agreed.
That kind of success has put Wright on the map as the go-to visa fixer for both Hollywood and Silicon Valley. It also highlights the use of so-called genius visas known as O-1s and EB-1s, which have largely escaped political controversy and are now the immigration solution of choice for many entrepreneurs.
[Related: 102-year-old man becomes U.S. citizen]
As many immigration lawyers see it, the paucity of immigration options for the most entrepreneurial foreigners mean they must use any avenue they can. This approach, along with seeming flexibility in Washington on what constitutes "extraordinary ability," means the O-1 is gaining traction in technology circles. Wider use could ultimately land it in political trouble.
For example, the H-1B visa, which allows employers to hire foreigners temporarily in certain specialized fields like technology, has drawn accusations from union groups and others that companies use it to bring in lower-skilled labor.
The O-1 visa allows individuals of "extraordinary ability" to come to the United States for up to three years, and can be extended. British journalist Piers Morgan used one when he replaced Larry King on his late-night TV show, Wright said.
The EB-1 is similar, but leads to a green card and permanent residency rather than a temporary stay, with "extraordinary ability" being one of the ways to qualify - along with being an outstanding professor or researcher, or a multinational executive.
[Related: Ariz. implements immigration law as feds push back]
Foreign entrepreneurs have another option - the Immigrant Investor Program, or EB-5 visa - but it requires a capital investment of at least $500,000 and the creation of at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers.
By contrast, no proof of personal wealth or investment in the United States is required for the O-1 or the EB-1.
There is also no cap on the number of O-1s that the government can award each year; about 12,280 were approved in 2011, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said, up from 9,478 in 2006. It issued about 25,000 EB-1s last year, below their cap of 40,000.
The H-1B is much more popular. Applications hit their annual cap of 85,000 earlier this month.
FALLBACK POSITION
While high-profile artists and entertainers have long used the O-1s, they are now becoming a fallback for businessmen and technologists who cannot get H1-Bs.
Josh Buckley, a 20-year-old British-born entrepreneur and a client of Wright's, is among the new crop of Internet entrepreneurs to win an O-1 visa. He applied after starting a few small companies, including one he sold at age 15 for a sum reaching the low six figures, he says.
He got his O-1 last year after lining up letters of recommendation from luminaries including Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Apple Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Buckley, whose MinoMonsters gaming company is backed by Andreessen, saw little choice other than the O-1. The H-1B was off limits because it usually does not go to people who work for themselves. The O-1, unlike most H-1Bs, also does not require a college education--a key feature for the ever-younger entrepreneurs flocking to Silicon Valley.
[Related: Six things to know about U.S. immigration]
Except when it comes to the O-1, visa officials "just don't understand the concept of someone being skilled without 12 years of experience or a bachelor's degree," says John Collison, a 22-year-old Irishman. He dropped out of Harvard University to work on Stripe, the payments company he co-founded with his brother, Patrick.
Like Buckley, he met Wright through the prestigious Silicon Valley start-up incubator known as Y Combinator. He won his O-1 in December 2010 and now has permanent residency status-- as does Buckley.
Wright, himself a South African immigrant, dismisses the notion that some of his clients might not rise to the level of "extraordinary ability."
"There's nothing in those regulations that requires you to be a genius," he says. "It's quite condescending to say, ‘Oh, the idiot Playboy Playmates, they don't qualify.'"
At the end of 2010, Bechard posted the first "Frisky Friday" photo on the Twitter microblogging service. Now young women all over the world tweet scantily-clad pictures of themselves on Fridays, with Playboy selecting a weekly winner.
Immigration officials "want to give (a visa) to someone who shows business skills," Bechard says. She also threw in such qualifications as her role as a mute Russian in a 2009 movie, "Sweet Karma," which won her a best actress award at the cult Fantastic Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
QUALIFICATION QUESTION
Many of Wright's young technology clients have had limited time to show they have "risen to the very top of the field of endeavor," as O-1 regulations state.
But quality rather than longevity is the key, Wright says. USCIS rules require extraordinary ability -- demonstrated by "sustained national or international acclaim" -- that he says his clients can prove with awards and testaments from leading players in their field.
The visas are "a lot of work," he said. "You can't just crank them out at high volume."
Asked about how it decides to grant O-1s, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service spokeswoman said: "USCIS decides each benefit request on a case-by-case basis relying on the law and evidence provided for that case. There are a variety of factors that influence the number of visa applications received and approved from year to year."
Wright says he hopes that one day, immigration reform will make it easier for talented immigrants, especially entrepreneurs, to come to this country. That is a widespread goal in Silicon Valley, where immigrant entrepreneurs have helped start many leading companies. Google Inc co-founder Sergey Brin, for example, came to the United States from the Soviet Union when he was a child.
The immigrant entrepreneurs say that far from taking away jobs, they are creating them by founding companies that may go on to employ hundreds or even thousands of people.
They have managed to find allies even among the harshest critics of H-1Bs.
"The O-1 is one of the few visas we support," said Kim Berry, a spokesman for the Programmers Guild, which favors the suspension of the H-1B program. "When they need to bring in the best and the brightest and the entrepreneurs, that's the only visa that helps America."
Indeed, efforts to make it easier for educated and enterprising foreigners to stay in the United States generally enjoy bi-partisan support in Washington. The complicated status of the immigration issue as a whole, though, has blocked any changes.
"The issue is pretty well understood," said Steve Case, the founder of AOL and now head of the venture capital firm Revolution LLC. "But there is this skepticism around the politics of immigration."
Thus the O-1 will probably remain a key channel for many immigrant entrepreneurs - and it does carry some additional side benefits.
British-born Scott Allison, co-founder of a software company called Teamly, was returning to the United States earlier this month and enjoyed a rare welcome from customs officials after they caught a glimpse of his new O-1 visa.
"'Wow, you must be really awesome,'" he recalls one commenting before waving him through. "I'm like, 'Gee, thanks.'"
(Reporting By Sarah McBride; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Lisa Von Ahn)
@yahoonews on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook
MORE POPULAR YAHOO! NEWS VIDEOS
_________________________________________
July 1, 2012
Source: The New York Times
This is only for your personal use.
Immigrants and Small Business
Immigrants are known as entrepreneurial people, for obvious reasons: those with the ambition and energy to uproot themselves and build new lives in a distant land are well equipped to build businesses and the economy, too. That is the common wisdom, anyway, which a new study from the Fiscal Policy Institute strikingly confirms. The study, based on census data, looks at owners of small businesses across the country and paints a broad and detailed picture of immigrant entrepreneurship.
The study found that there were 900,000 immigrants among small-business owners in the United States, about 18 percent of the total. This percentage is higher than the immigrant share of the overall population, which is 13 percent, and the immigrant share of the labor force, at 16 percent. Small businesses in which half or more of the owners were immigrants employed 4.7 million people in 2007, the latest year for which data were available, generating $776 billion in receipts. They accounted for 30 percent of the growth in small businesses — those with fewer than 100 employees — between 1990 and 2010.
Immigrant entrepreneurs are concentrated in professional and business services, retail, construction, educational and social services, and leisure and hospitality. They own restaurants, doctor’s offices, real-estate firms, groceries and truck-transportation services. More of them come from Mexico than any other country, followed by Indians, Koreans, Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese. California has the highest percentage of immigrants among small-business owners at 33 percent, followed by New York (29 percent), New Jersey (28 percent), Florida (26 percent) and Hawaii (23 percent).
The study did not look at immigrants’ legal status, but because it covered only incorporated firms, not off-the-books operations, it presumably included few, if any, business owners without papers.
By rousingly affirming the centrality of immigration in the American economy, the study exposes a fault line running through the Republican Party, which mythologizes small-business owners while treating immigrants with hostility bordering on fury. There is no shortage of conservative business owners who celebrate the immigrant contribution to America — Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch are two — but Republican leaders, including the party standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, have allied themselves with extremist efforts to limit immigration and hound and harass millions of unauthorized immigrants out of the country.
In G.O.P. strongholds like Arizona — and Alabama, home to sleepy small towns where Latino-owned bodegas and laundries are among the only signs of economic life downtown — anti-immigrant policies are threating to strangle economic growth. If Republicans started believing their own rhetoric about small-business owners, they would see immigration not as a sea of troubles but as a deep well of capitalist energy, waiting to be fully tapped.
_________________________________________
Source: The New York Times
This is only for your personal use.
Immigrants and Small Business
Immigrants are known as entrepreneurial people, for obvious reasons: those with the ambition and energy to uproot themselves and build new lives in a distant land are well equipped to build businesses and the economy, too. That is the common wisdom, anyway, which a new study from the Fiscal Policy Institute strikingly confirms. The study, based on census data, looks at owners of small businesses across the country and paints a broad and detailed picture of immigrant entrepreneurship.
The study found that there were 900,000 immigrants among small-business owners in the United States, about 18 percent of the total. This percentage is higher than the immigrant share of the overall population, which is 13 percent, and the immigrant share of the labor force, at 16 percent. Small businesses in which half or more of the owners were immigrants employed 4.7 million people in 2007, the latest year for which data were available, generating $776 billion in receipts. They accounted for 30 percent of the growth in small businesses — those with fewer than 100 employees — between 1990 and 2010.
Immigrant entrepreneurs are concentrated in professional and business services, retail, construction, educational and social services, and leisure and hospitality. They own restaurants, doctor’s offices, real-estate firms, groceries and truck-transportation services. More of them come from Mexico than any other country, followed by Indians, Koreans, Cubans, Chinese and Vietnamese. California has the highest percentage of immigrants among small-business owners at 33 percent, followed by New York (29 percent), New Jersey (28 percent), Florida (26 percent) and Hawaii (23 percent).
The study did not look at immigrants’ legal status, but because it covered only incorporated firms, not off-the-books operations, it presumably included few, if any, business owners without papers.
By rousingly affirming the centrality of immigration in the American economy, the study exposes a fault line running through the Republican Party, which mythologizes small-business owners while treating immigrants with hostility bordering on fury. There is no shortage of conservative business owners who celebrate the immigrant contribution to America — Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rupert Murdoch are two — but Republican leaders, including the party standard-bearer, Mitt Romney, have allied themselves with extremist efforts to limit immigration and hound and harass millions of unauthorized immigrants out of the country.
In G.O.P. strongholds like Arizona — and Alabama, home to sleepy small towns where Latino-owned bodegas and laundries are among the only signs of economic life downtown — anti-immigrant policies are threating to strangle economic growth. If Republicans started believing their own rhetoric about small-business owners, they would see immigration not as a sea of troubles but as a deep well of capitalist energy, waiting to be fully tapped.
_________________________________________
OCTOBER 4, 2011, AM
Immigrants Play Key Role as New York City Entrepreneurs
By PATRICK WALL
This article is only for your own personal use.
Any taxi-riding, bodega-shopping, laundromat-using New Yorker knows that immigrants own many of the businesses that make New York tick. Now a new study shows that while immigrants constitute just over a third of the city's population, they make up nearly half of the city's small-business owners.
The study, published Monday by the Fiscal Policy Institute and based on census data, found that more than 69,000 New York City business owners - about 48 percent of the total - are foreign born. These immigrant entrepreneurs hail from around the world and run companies in every sector of the economy. But in certain lines of business, including dry cleaning, taxi services and grocery stores, the study shows that immigrant owners dominate.
"When you think of New York neighborhoods, you think about the stores and restaurants and groceries," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, a senior fellow at the institute - a union-supported, nonpartisan research and advocacy group. "Those are the kinds of small businesses where immigrants are playing a particularly strong role."
The study (pdf) is based on a five-year sample of data from the 2005-9 American Community Survey. It defines small business owners as self-employed people with incorporated businesses, which excludes corporations and nonprofits.
The country whose natives make up the largest share of immigrant business owners is China, with about 9 percent of the total, followed by the Dominican Republic, Korea, India, Italy, Greece, Colombia, countries of the former Soviet Union, Israel and the Palestinian territories and Jamaica. Another 55 percent of foreign-born owners come from other countries.
Immigrant business owners represent a majority in several industry sectors, including transportation and warehousing, retail trade, construction, wholesale trade and manufacturing. Within those broad sectors, foreign-born ownership of certain types of businesses dwarfs United States-born ownership. A full 90 percent of the city's dry cleaning and taxi service owners are immigrants, as are 84 percent of grocery store owners and 75 percent of child day care owners.
Immigrants also have a strong presence in higher-skilled professions. Among computer systems design, architectural and engineering businesses, 40 percent of owners are foreign born.
The study notes that while the percentage of immigrant business owners is greater than the share of immigrants in the overall population, it is similar to the share of immigrants in the labor force, which is 46 percent. This means that New York's immigrants are more likely than their American-born peers both to own small businesses and to be in the labor force.
A 2008 analysis by the federal Small Business Administration found that, across the country, immigrants are nearly 30 percent more likely to start a business than are nonimmigrants.
Despite their numbers, immigrant entrepreneurs must navigate a sea of obstacles beyond the normal challenges that all small business owners face. One recent study showed that immigrants in New York were less likely than nonimmigrants to own a business that has been running for more than three-and-a-half years, and more likely to have shut down a business within the past year.
One commonly cited hurdle is a lack of access to the capital needed to start or expand a company. While most banks hesitate to loan money to any small business, which can be a risky, time-consuming process, they are especially reluctant to lend to immigrants, who often have little collateral and bad or nonexistent credit histories, experts say.
The situation is made worse for immigrants when banks send loan applications to distant offices to be evaluated, said Paul Quintero, CEO of ACCION USA, a New York-based microlender.
"You put an application in and it's processed by someone in Omaha," said Mr. Quintero. This disadvantages immigrants, who need "people that can look into the white of your eyes, speak your language and understand where you're coming from."
The average ACCION small business loan is about $7,000 and, in New York City, a majority of borrowers are immigrants.
In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Abel Cherubin, a native of Haiti, has prepared taxes for a local clientele -- a mix of working-class blacks, Latinos and West Indians -- from a rented storefront for more than a decade. But his client base has shrunk to 300 customers from a peak of 800 and he has had to lay off his last few employees. He has fallen $6,000 behind on the rent and received an eviction notice last month.
"Maybe three, four months I could be out of business," said Mr. Cherubin, 55, who during the recession has borrowed money from a friend rather than approach a lender, after being turned down for loans in the past. "That's my worry: I'm afraid one day I won't have that door to be open."
Another major barrier for foreign-born entrepreneurs is confusion about the city's myriad business regulations. Whether because of inexperience, language problems or reliance on informal business networks, immigrants often misunderstand or are unaware of the rules regarding tax filing, permits and practices.
For instance, many ground-floor merchants in Chinatown do not realize they are responsible for cleaning the sidewalks outside their shops until they are fined for noncompliance, said Larry Mei, a business counselor at the Chinatown Manpower Project.
"The business here is more regulated," Mr. Mei said. "In China, they don't have that many agencies that look after the businesses."
This year, the city introduced three new initiatives intended to support immigrant business owners. They include a competition that awarded funds to organizations that assist foreign-born entrepreneurs, free business classes to be offered in five non-English languages and an expo this month that will showcase immigrant-owned food manufacturing businesses.
________________________
Immigrants Play Key Role as New York City Entrepreneurs
By PATRICK WALL
This article is only for your own personal use.
Any taxi-riding, bodega-shopping, laundromat-using New Yorker knows that immigrants own many of the businesses that make New York tick. Now a new study shows that while immigrants constitute just over a third of the city's population, they make up nearly half of the city's small-business owners.
The study, published Monday by the Fiscal Policy Institute and based on census data, found that more than 69,000 New York City business owners - about 48 percent of the total - are foreign born. These immigrant entrepreneurs hail from around the world and run companies in every sector of the economy. But in certain lines of business, including dry cleaning, taxi services and grocery stores, the study shows that immigrant owners dominate.
"When you think of New York neighborhoods, you think about the stores and restaurants and groceries," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, a senior fellow at the institute - a union-supported, nonpartisan research and advocacy group. "Those are the kinds of small businesses where immigrants are playing a particularly strong role."
The study (pdf) is based on a five-year sample of data from the 2005-9 American Community Survey. It defines small business owners as self-employed people with incorporated businesses, which excludes corporations and nonprofits.
The country whose natives make up the largest share of immigrant business owners is China, with about 9 percent of the total, followed by the Dominican Republic, Korea, India, Italy, Greece, Colombia, countries of the former Soviet Union, Israel and the Palestinian territories and Jamaica. Another 55 percent of foreign-born owners come from other countries.
Immigrant business owners represent a majority in several industry sectors, including transportation and warehousing, retail trade, construction, wholesale trade and manufacturing. Within those broad sectors, foreign-born ownership of certain types of businesses dwarfs United States-born ownership. A full 90 percent of the city's dry cleaning and taxi service owners are immigrants, as are 84 percent of grocery store owners and 75 percent of child day care owners.
Immigrants also have a strong presence in higher-skilled professions. Among computer systems design, architectural and engineering businesses, 40 percent of owners are foreign born.
The study notes that while the percentage of immigrant business owners is greater than the share of immigrants in the overall population, it is similar to the share of immigrants in the labor force, which is 46 percent. This means that New York's immigrants are more likely than their American-born peers both to own small businesses and to be in the labor force.
A 2008 analysis by the federal Small Business Administration found that, across the country, immigrants are nearly 30 percent more likely to start a business than are nonimmigrants.
Despite their numbers, immigrant entrepreneurs must navigate a sea of obstacles beyond the normal challenges that all small business owners face. One recent study showed that immigrants in New York were less likely than nonimmigrants to own a business that has been running for more than three-and-a-half years, and more likely to have shut down a business within the past year.
One commonly cited hurdle is a lack of access to the capital needed to start or expand a company. While most banks hesitate to loan money to any small business, which can be a risky, time-consuming process, they are especially reluctant to lend to immigrants, who often have little collateral and bad or nonexistent credit histories, experts say.
The situation is made worse for immigrants when banks send loan applications to distant offices to be evaluated, said Paul Quintero, CEO of ACCION USA, a New York-based microlender.
"You put an application in and it's processed by someone in Omaha," said Mr. Quintero. This disadvantages immigrants, who need "people that can look into the white of your eyes, speak your language and understand where you're coming from."
The average ACCION small business loan is about $7,000 and, in New York City, a majority of borrowers are immigrants.
In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Abel Cherubin, a native of Haiti, has prepared taxes for a local clientele -- a mix of working-class blacks, Latinos and West Indians -- from a rented storefront for more than a decade. But his client base has shrunk to 300 customers from a peak of 800 and he has had to lay off his last few employees. He has fallen $6,000 behind on the rent and received an eviction notice last month.
"Maybe three, four months I could be out of business," said Mr. Cherubin, 55, who during the recession has borrowed money from a friend rather than approach a lender, after being turned down for loans in the past. "That's my worry: I'm afraid one day I won't have that door to be open."
Another major barrier for foreign-born entrepreneurs is confusion about the city's myriad business regulations. Whether because of inexperience, language problems or reliance on informal business networks, immigrants often misunderstand or are unaware of the rules regarding tax filing, permits and practices.
For instance, many ground-floor merchants in Chinatown do not realize they are responsible for cleaning the sidewalks outside their shops until they are fined for noncompliance, said Larry Mei, a business counselor at the Chinatown Manpower Project.
"The business here is more regulated," Mr. Mei said. "In China, they don't have that many agencies that look after the businesses."
This year, the city introduced three new initiatives intended to support immigrant business owners. They include a competition that awarded funds to organizations that assist foreign-born entrepreneurs, free business classes to be offered in five non-English languages and an expo this month that will showcase immigrant-owned food manufacturing businesses.
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