Thread: D.C. - For Immigrants, a Ripple Effect

For Immigrants, a Ripple Effect
Tough Times Trickle Down Through Newcomers' Networks

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 28, 2008; Page A01

While the economy's tailspin is spreading pain across the Washington region, it has hit many of the area's close-knit immigrant communities with particular speed and force. The dependence on one another that has contributed so much to their economic success has now created a domino effect in which the misfortune of one segment of the group almost immediately affects the rest.

Ethiopian cabdrivers suffering from a drop-off in customers have cut back drastically on lunches at the District's Ethiopian restaurants, which, in turn, are now grappling with how to survive.

Korean construction contractors and real estate investors reeling from the housing crisis are having trouble affording tuition at the area's hagwons -- the private, after-school academies to which Korean parents traditionally send their children. At least one has closed, and another, Best Academy, with branches in Springfield and Sterling as well as Ellicott City, has slashed its prices by almost 40 percent.

The consequences reach beyond the financial, altering local immigrant culture in small but significant ways. Economic pressures are straining some cherished customs and strengthening others. Many immigrants are stepping outside their comfort zones to participate more in the broader economy.

The shifts are particularly evident among the District's hundreds of Ethiopian cabdrivers, whose distress over losing customers is compounded by the city's recent introduction of a meter system that cabbies contend charges some of the lowest rates in the country.

Negussie Gugsa, who has been driving a cab since he sought political asylum in the United States 10 years ago, said business is so bad that the association of Ethiopian air force veterans to which he belongs recently decided to cut its monthly dues from $20 to $10. The money is mainly used to help new arrivals get on their feet, he said, and is part of a tradition of communal obligation at the core of Ethiopian identity.

"When I came, they paid three months of my rent and all my food. . . . I didn't have anything, so it would have been very tough without them," he said on a recent morning on a break from his second job as a mechanic in Northeast Washington. "I have always been committed to do the same for the next person, and I feel so bad that we don't have the chance to do that now."

Abdulrezak Aboubaker, a fellow Ethiopian driver who had stopped for an oil change, nodded sympathetically. Last year, Aboubaker said, he could expect to make as much as $200 after 10 hours of work. Now, he's lucky if he gets $100 for 16 hours.

Aboubaker, 42, got in his cab and started driving toward Northwest Washington. It was the sort of drizzly day that used to send pedestrians scrambling for a cab. But an hour of circling brought no takers.

Aboubaker's cellphone started vibrating. It was his mortgage company calling to discuss his latest missed payment. He hit a button to send the call to voice mail and stuffed the phone back into his jacket.

About 12:30 p.m., Aboubaker turned onto a sparsely populated stretch of Ninth Street NW, where almost every other storefront is an Ethiopian restaurant. A year ago, the strip would have been packed with taxis on lunch break, Aboubaker observed. He almost always stopped at Habesha, where the owners knew before he opened his mouth that he would order either kifto, a kind of beef tartare seasoned with cardamom and other spices, or tibs, lamb fried with onions and peppers.

For a man who spends most of his day driving strangers, the daily meal with fellow drivers was more than just a chance to catch up with friends and talk politics, Aboubaker said. It was a way to recapture a slice of the life he left behind in Ethiopia, where gathering for meals is so central to the culture that people eat from the same enormous, pancakelike piece of bread, called injera.

"We come from big families. We like to be together," Aboubaker said.

But at $10 a meal, eating out has become too much of a luxury. Shortly after 1 p.m., Aboubaker pulled over to a curb and popped the trunk of his cab to reveal his new lunchtime ritual: a small plastic container that his wife had filled with chickpeas and a few torn pieces of injera.

Other cabbies have adopted the same practice, said Habesha's co-owner, Yared Mamo. He estimated that at least 70 percent of his business came from the cabdrivers. "It's very serious. Our earnings are down like 20 or 30 percent," he said, surveying his empty restaurant on a recent afternoon. "Even when the cabdrivers do come, they end up sharing a plate between two or three or maybe four people."

One restaurant on the strip has closed. Another has stopped serving lunch. Mamo said he is planning to change the menu to appeal more to non-Africans.

There are signs that Korean business owners who once catered almost exclusively to their tightknit community are also trying to branch out. Sang K. Lee, owner of Spa World, a Korean-style luxury bathhouse in Centreville, said he has been trying to make up for a recent decline in Korean customers by advertising in publications that serve immigrants from countries such as Russia and Turkey that also have a tradition of using bathhouses.

"It was difficult at first because of the language barrier," Lee said with a chuckle. "But I found a translator, and now it's working fine. It's interesting. I'm getting to know all these Russian people."

But if immigrants are modifying some practices, they are reinforcing others.

Low-income Latino immigrants for whom it was customary to cover part of the mortgage by renting out rooms are taking the practice to new levels. Francisco Ramirez, a Salvadoran sewer-pipe layer who was laid off two months ago, was renting two bedrooms to relatives in his brick colonial in Herndon. Now he has decided to bring in a sister and a niece as well.

The move increases his household to nine people, but with a $3,000-plus monthly mortgage and a teenage son to support, Ramirez said, "it's the only option."

Because Latino immigrants are so heavily concentrated in construction work, they appear to have been hardest hit by the mortgage crisis and subsequent housing slump. In the first quarter of 2008, their unemployment rate reached 7.5 percent nationally, and though it dropped to 6.4 percent by the third quarter, it remains higher than the 5.8 percent rate among non-Latino, native-born residents.

Patty Santamaria, who runs a package-mailing service at the Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, said rising unemployment has had a dramatic impact on one bittersweet holiday custom of low-income Central American immigrants: Every November, mothers and fathers hit the malls to buy Christmas presents for the children they left in their home countries, then pack the gifts into large boxes to mail in time for the big day.

"Last year, the line of people with packages to send was enormous, all the way to the cafeteria," Santamaria said, gesturing toward a dining area several yards away. "But we haven't mailed a single package today. . . . And we've only sent about 10 this whole month."

Money transfers to relatives back home have also plummeted, she said; nationally, remittances to Latin America this year have grown at the slowest rate on record.

Yet Ramirez, the out-of-work sewer pipe layer, said not all of the changes have been bad.

Before, he said, the women in the house did the grocery shopping every Saturday, and he barely knew his way around a supermarket. But in his quest to save pennies, Ramirez recently discovered that the Grand Mart in Sterling has a stand where less-than-perfect produce is offered at bargain prices every few days. He's been hooked ever since.

"Look at this," he marveled in Spanish, picking out a mango with a small brown spot. "If you cut that out and eat it today it's perfect -- and you've saved one dollar."

He plans to continue shopping this way even after he finds another job.

"It's ridiculous to spend money unnecessarily. Maybe my misfortune has served to educate me," he said, with a wistful smile.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02594.html

WEhat about white Americans they are always left out of all polls on how they are being depressed with the way things are where are the people that are supposed to be protecting Americans of all color. They have stuck their heads in the sand and do not care about america at all unless it advances their agenda.. I hsad a boss just like this and all he cared about was his own advancement and did not care about the people that made him look we carried him thruhis career and he did nothing for us unless it benefited him and most of the time when he got what he wanted we were left behind.. This is just the way I see all politicians! ! ! ! !