STILL THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITY

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From the ethnic restaurant at your neighborhood minimall to renowned fashion houses, businesses founded by foreign-born entrepreneurs make up a significant part of the local economy.

Actually, they’re more than significant. They’re huge.

Los Angeles County has more Latino-owned businesses than any other area, according to census data. L.A.’s 188,000 Latino businesses is more than Miami-Dade’s 163,000. And Los Angeles has the most Asian-owned businesses by far, with 140,000. Queens in New York is a distant second with 48,000, and Orange County has 46,000.

In this special report, the Business Journal selected eight immigrant entrepreneurs in Los Angeles and asked them to tell their story: Why they came to these shores in the first place, why they started their businesses in Los Angeles instead of their home countries and whether the reality of American life matched their expectation.

And if you thought immigrant entrepreneurship is confined mostly to mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants, think again.

Listen to Kamran Pourzanjani, who founded two tech companies here: “Many technology and Internet companies, including my competitors, were started by immigrant entrepreneurs,” he said. “It speaks to how open and welcoming we are as a society.” Why here, instead of their native land?

Many immigrants see something here that many native-born Americans overlook: the chance, the real opportunity, for anybody to do anything. Listen to Mercedes Pellegrini, who used to sell pastries to Vittorio’s Ristorante and now owns it: “In Brazil, opportunity only comes to the very, very wealthy,” she said. “There is no opportunity.”

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