By: Dr. Kumar Gurung (Ph.D.,MS.,MCEC.,LLB.)Immigrants have long been portrayed as people acting in segregated communities and who, for the most part at least, tend to set up businesses that could be of lower risk and lower returns (Fairlie & Lofstrom, 2015; March-Chorda, 2021). However, it remains relatively challenging to connect immigrant entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial ecosystems; and this is a challenge that ought to be overcome for immigrants are to become effectively and thoroughly uninvolved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Any understanding of the real impact of entrepreneurship on the economy of any country must be commensurate with undertaking a holistic examination of the concerned country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
For example, the U.S. is one of the few countries globally with an exemplary entrepreneurialecosystem mainly because it tends to be reasonably robust in most areas of entrepreneurship (Camarota & Zeigler, 2016; Awotoye & Singh, 2018). By extension, the U.S. has recognized the fact that entrepreneurship – be it by its citizens or the many immigrants who reside in the country –
plays a crucial role in its economic growth and development and has responded by creating and implementing policy initiatives to specifically encourage entrepreneurial behavior (Bernstein,
Brown, & Brown, 2019). With the cultivation of a culture of motivation and determination, this practice has made the U.S. one of the most incredible places for virtually anyone to be an
entrepreneur. This partly explains why the U.S. is ranked by the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEDI) as the world’s most entrepreneurial country (Awotoye & Singh, 2018).
One issue that tends to be overlooked or whose importance tends to be minimized is the significant role of immigrant entrepreneurs in the economic success of the U.S. Given that GEDI relies heavily on the entrepreneurial ecosystem’s health in assessing a given country’s level of entrepreneurship,
American economic success may be significantly impacted if immigrant entrepreneurs could transfer their talent back to their countries of origin. The reality is that this depends on whether
prevailing economic conditions make it favorable to transfer such talent (Igboamazu, 2016). Therefore, it has been contended that to some extent, the continued stay of the U.S. on the top of the
rest of the world as the most entrepreneurial country is likely to change if its many immigrants found it economically rewarding to transfer their talents to their countries of origin (Bernstein et
al., 2019).
Among other reasons, immigrants tend to be less involved or uninvolved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem because of the lack of information regarding how the entrepreneurial ecosystem could facilitate the entrepreneurship of immigrants (Xu et al., 2019). However, it is still possible for the entrepreneurial ecosystem to facilitate the entrepreneurship of immigrants in different ways, such as through alternative ways of financing, provision of microloans, enhanced and equal access to opportunities, and the adoption and use of drive and experimentation (Ram et al., 2017). It can be achieved through the provision of access to new and emerging markets, contacts with business partners and early customers, assistance in the translation and understanding of the language of the host country, workshops and seminars, free working space, and consultancy in different areas of business (such as legal regulation, preparation of business plans, and accounting) (Picanço Cruz, & de Queiroz Falcão, 2016). However, the problem that often arises is not necessarily the availability
of these and other resources but the lack of a link between the available resources and the immigrant entrepreneurs. In essence, resources tend to be almost always available to immigrant
entrepreneurs, but these entrepreneurs are usually unaware of their existence. It means that if immigrant entrepreneurs’ benefit from the entrepreneurial ecosystem truly, this link has to be
improved (Naumann et al., 2018).
related problem pertains to the language barrier, making it hard or sometimes impossible for immigrant entrepreneurs to communicate effectively with their customers. This concern is
compounded by the natural tendency by local people to distrust foreign business operators, especially those who are immigrants without citizenship or Permanent Residency status (Roundy
& Fayard, 2020). Therefore, effective utilization of the entrepreneurial ecosystem has to include (if not begin with) the implementation of deliberate measures designed to improve communication and address trust issues. Therefore, helping immigrant entrepreneurs learn the local language or the
language widely used for commercial, or business purposes could be an essential starting point. Fortunately, most customers tend to be more trusting of immigrants in general and immigrant
entrepreneurs if these immigrants speak and understand the language of these customers (Acs et al., 2017). Therefore, learning the local language could help immigrant entrepreneurs overcome the language barrier and that of trust.
Overall, there is a necessity for more strategic approaches to all immigrant entrepreneurs as a special kind of sub-group that is particularly vulnerable in society and the entrepreneurial system
(and therefore needs more specialized or urgent attention). Such an approach could help mobilize necessary or resources to help immigrant entrepreneurs better cope with their unique challenges. These challenges, if left unaddressed, would undermine immigrant entrepreneurship as a whole
and, by extension, hurt the economies of many nation-states and especially those with significant populations of immigrant entrepreneurs (Ngongoni et al., 2017).
To better understand the effects or likely effects of a quality entrepreneurial ecosystem on immigrant entrepreneurship, it is essential first to understand the extent to which immigrant
entrepreneurs in the U.S. start new businesses. This is crucial because it would make little or no economic sense for the issue to be investigated when only a few immigrant entrepreneurs in the
U.S. Towards this end, it is now a fact that out of all new business startups in the U.S., almost one- third are started by immigrant entrepreneurs (Pekkala Kerr & Kerr, 2020). It implies that if all
immigrant enterprises were to fade or collapse, the U.S. would effectively lose almost one-third of all its new business startups. Yet, the main problem for immigrant enterprises is not that they are difficult or impossible to start but that they tend to fade and even collapse within the first five years (Bernstein et al., 2019). This is in turn attributed to the fact that, to a large extent and for the most part, immigrant entrepreneurs do not have the relevant expertise or knowledge necessary to evolve their enterprises beyond the ethnic enclave, which is effectively the locale of their businesses (González & Campbell, 2018).
Unfortunately, this tendency by immigrant businesses to not evolve beyond their ethnic enclaves is a major undoing for the businesses and their owners as it makes the business overly and often unnecessarily depend on the entrepreneurs’ ethnic communities (Mata & Alves, 2018). To succeed in the highly challenging and competitive global business environment, new business startups, even if they are owned and operated by nonimmigrants, have to endeavor to break away from the
ethnic enclave and possibly adopt a global or at least national outlook. This way, it becomes easier for these businesses to compete more effectively with rival ones. When these business startups are owned by immigrants with limited or no knowledge of (or expertise in) the local business environment, it becomes even more vital for them to evolve beyond their ethnic enclaves
(Audretsch et al., 2019).
To expand out of their enclaves, immigrant entrepreneurs need to adopt and use three main strategies. These are seeking and nurturing professional development and mentorship relationships
to gain access to and obtain financial resources, opportunities, and advice; achieving cultural and language proficiency of the host country or and community; and adopting a multicultural
hybridism model to change the internal makeup of the employee base to include managerial and labor resources that are more interethnic (Shwetzer et al., 2019). In addition to these three main
strategies, there is a need for immigrant entrepreneurs to be individually ready to seize and makeuse of opportunities and be tenacious when it comes to their business efforts (González &
Campbell, 2018). As would be expected, these strategies are not all to address the challenges that immigrant-owned enterprises face. Instead, they can serve as an essential starting point because when immigrant-owned enterprises manage to break out of their ethnic enclaves, their chance of breaking even increases significantly (Lilius & Hewidy, 2019)
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