Immigrants play a huge role in creating businesses in the United States. In a study done nationwide, in November 2008, it was found that immigrants are nearly 30 percent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants (Bowles 2009). A study done by Jonathan Bowles reveals that immigrants drove all the growth in New York City’s self-employed population between 1990 and 2000. Interestingly enough, the number of foreign-born self-employed individuals totaled 64,001 while the number of native-born self-employed individuals totaled 15,657. Flushing and Sunset Park had a big jump in the increase of new businesses, 55% and 47% respectively, and the first thing that comes to find when you think about those two neighborhoods is the outstanding Asian population in those two neighborhoods.

Asians have generally played an important role, the past few decades, in the creation of businesses in the United States, primarily in California and New York. More Specifically, Korean immigrants have been known to be self-employed primarily in Los Angeles, and New York City. Korean immigrants, in the 1990 census, actually had the highest self-employment rate among all minority and immigrant groups in Los Angeles, exceeding even the native-born Whites of Russian ancestry (Min 1996). The question to ask to understand this phenomenon is: “Why has starting a business become ‘a cultural fashion’ among Koreans?” And the answer is based upon two key factors: culture and disadvantage. The culture theory (Kim 1999) examines the rationale of some immigrants to bring some of their home country into their new society. While the disadvantage theory analyzes the disadvantages Korean immigrants face such as: poor English, licensing requirements, American credentials, discrimination, etc. (Kim 1999).