Northeast Region V
Older region transformed by new immigrants
By Steven Saint

The United States as we know it was started with the colonization of northeastern North America in the 1600s. The Northeast has always been a hub of immigration, including the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans to New York City during World War II.

The Northeast continues to welcome immigrants from all over the world. For Hispanic entrepreneurs, there are plenty of opportunities as well as assistance in overcoming the hurdles common to people in business.

New York, New Jersey

New York still has more business per square foot than any area of the country. It is the biggest area for Small Business Administration activity—so big, the SBA has divided the state into three districts.

Jose Sifontes is district director for New York City. The number of SBA-backed loans to Hispanic business owners in the first half of the current fiscal year has jumped 38 percent over the same period last year.

Queens County, also the easternmost borough of New York City, has 2.2 million residents and is the region's highest-growth area, says Ernie Cury, vice president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Queens.

Cury's family immigrated to Queens from the Dominican Republic in 1956.

Many areas in north-central Queens, originally settled by Irish immigrants, are now solidly Hispanic. The latest wave has come from Ecuador and there is even a new Ecuadorian chamber of commerce.

"Lots of immigrants want to know if they can open a business without having a Green Card," says Cury, a former banker with Banco Popular who now works as a business consultant and SCORE counselor. "There are licensing problems for some, but anyone with a Social Security number of ITIN can operate a business."

Cury is seeing a lot of Hispanics open restaurants and bodegas in Queens even though rents run at least $1 per square foot. If you can get into a lease, the high volume of New York City foot traffic will help you make overhead.

The Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is located in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, and the new Ecuadorian chamber is in nearby Bergen County.

New England

Nader Acevedo came to Boston from Colombia to study business and never turned back. After careers in banking and marketing, he was named executive director last year of the Hispanic-American Chamber of Commerce, the largest minority chamber in New England.

Boston's 4.4 million residents live in several distinct neighborhoods and Hispanics from different countries tend to cluster together. There's a part of town for Dominicans, Colombians, Mexicans and even Peruvians, Acevedo says.

The Hispanic business community is young, with the majority of chamber members aged 22-28. Besides traditional interest in restaurants and bodegas, Boston Hispanics are moving into the real estate and technology sectors.

In fact, the SBA gave an award last fall to Robert Delhome, the Panamanian-born founder of Charter Environmental, an environmental technology company.

Hispanic communities are also growing to the west and south of Boston, in communities like Lawrence, Worcester and Brockton. Outside Massachusetts, Acevedo says a Hispanic community has taken root in Manchester, N.H.

"The biggest challenges I see are access to capital and education," Acevedo says. "The chamber offers a lot of seminars to train Latinos in how to run a business."

Mid-Atlantic

On the eastern edge of the Mid-Atlantic states is the Delaware Valley, a metro area of 6 million people with the city of Philadelphia at its core.

Philadelphia, so steeped in American colonial history, is now home to 170,000 Hispanics, seven Spanish-language newspapers and the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce.

The U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce will hold its annual September convention in Philadelphia, an event Varsovia Fernandez hopes will inspire the region's small but growing Hispanic business community.

"Latinos often don't understand the American financial system, and that keeps them from getting capital and credit," says Fernandez, the new executive director of the Philadelphia chamber. "I hope they will realize how huge the opportunities are."

Fernandez, born in the Dominican Republic, worked in venture funding, technology and social services before taking the chamber job. She says Hispanics—whether opening a restaurant, selling real estate or getting into information technology—need to better understand accounting, finances and banking.

The region's traditional Puerto Rican population is being joined by immigrants from Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru.

Fernandez says the diverse communities seem to be working together rather than fracturing into cultural groups.