Enter the Entrepreneurs

By Michael Demarest

For the talented ambitious, America = Utopia West

There was in mid-20th century an American institution known as the Green Card. It was difficult to acquire, and it was issued only to the most desirable foreigners who sought it. The fortunate man or woman who obtained it was ensured permanent residence in the U.S., from which many corporeal and psychological benefits might flow.

By 1978 the document had in fact been colored blue for 13 years, though, for obvious symbolic reasons, immigrants still called it the Green Card. In an era of restricted immigration, permission to live indefinitely in the U.S. was granted in effect only to those who without American relatives brought needed skills or at least $40,000 to invest in the U.S. economy.

--Future Historian Anon.

For a number of reasons related to conditions in their own countries and U.S. policy, the influx of immigrants bearing gifts has swelled substantially in the past five years. Many would-be Americans who get through the golden door today bring gold or its equivalent in education, talent, ingenuity and ambition. They exceed in relative numbers and potential cultural impact any similar earlier waves of newcomers. These are not the swinging superrich, who have always been free to flit from clime to clime. Nor are they the winging investors who see unsurpassed opportunity for profit here, or at least a safe haven for capital. They are entrepreneurs and professionals: bankers, financiers, managers, restaurateurs, moteliers and boutiquiers, disco owners, jewelers, architects, designers, publicists, models, film makers, exporter-importers and dealers in just about everything from abstract art to shopping centers.

For the most part, these notable newcomers are those who, not without pain, have taken the decision to forsake comfortable backgrounds, familial esteem and personal success to invest their lives in America. The decision may have been reinforced by political, social and economic instability at home, an underlying factor in the entire history of westward migration. Nonetheless, the immigrants have much to lose by coming to an alien society: not only their grubstake but also their cultural heritage, the ease of self-expression in a native language, even the self-assurance that impelled them to the U.S.

Why do they come?

"There are almost as many reasons as there are applications for visas," sighs a U.S. consular official in Naples. Well-todo Italian families live in fear of political murder, maimings and kidnapings for cash. Add to the negative side the concern of many Europeans that private enterprise and personal initiative will be socialized out of existence. On the positive side, most of the entrepreneurial immigrants have either tasted la vie americaine on tourist or business visits, or have been educated here, and sniff the opportunities on every corner. They see the U.S. (native Americans take note) as an unfettered land in which the newcomer can succeed by applying every Horatian and Algerian virtue from ardor to zeal. Then, too, the home countries appear to the traveled young European to be montages of daffodils and gorgonzola, wine cellars and chateaux and cozy pubs that seem totally irrelevant to real life in 1978. As Journalist Ted Morgan, ne Conte Sanche de Gramont--he anagrammatized his surname and became an American citizen last year--wrote in On Becoming American: "One has to come to America to get a sense of life's possibilities ... The true American, in the existential sense of the man who makes himself, is the immigrant, for he is American by choice."

Many of the new Americans-by-choice are not, of course, Western Europeans. In the past two years there has been a great influx of entrepreneurial Iranians, Canadians, South Americans and

Jamaicans. But, almost invariably, it is the sense of life's possibilities that turns the compass to America. Helen Arjad, 25, a vivacious, casual-chic Iranian who studied fashion design in Switzerland and plans a career in real estate in Southern California, puts it as well as anyone: "If you have talent and knowledge and start a business here, 85% of the time you're successful. In other countries, you have to be 85% lucky to be successful."

Patrick Terrail, 35, only son of the family that has owned the famed three-star Tour d'Argent restaurant in Paris for generations, decided to found his own restaurant, the fashionable Ma Maison, in Los Angeles. Says he: "I realized French people couldn't accept youth, change and new ideas for their own sake. In America, if they like your idea, it doesn't matter how old you are."

Many talented European immigrants sound as if they were taping / Love New York commercials. Argentine-born Enrico Tucci, 40, who was a movie producer in Rome before he opened a Manhattan showroom devoted to contemporary Italian furniture, finds that "New York is becoming a European city. It has the best of America and the best of Europe." French-born Robert Pascal, a onetime bartender who owns two of Manhattan's most elegant restaurants, Chez Pascal and Le Premier, was able to open the latter with the help of $500,000 in personal loans from his faithful customers. "I didn't like America when I first arrived [in 1968]," he recalls. "I was disappointed in the way people ate and dressed. But my enthusiasm grew as I saw America grow. This country has grown 100 years in the past ten."

For enterprising young business people, the competitive pace and relative freedom from governmental and union restrictions are a major lure. Daniele Bodini, 32, the fast-moving, fast-thinking son of a Milanese stockbroker, has ascended in five years from a trainee at the elite investment firm of Blyth Eastman Dillon to owner of a multimillion-dollar real estate investment company. Says he: "I believe in meritocracy. Any place where you can be fired in 20 minutes is a great place." Adds Swiss-born Pierre Honegger, 34, a former journalist who three years ago bought a foreign-car dealership in Princeton, N.J., and has tripled its sales: "If you work hard and have a good idea, you have a much bigger reward than in Europe, where everything is superorganized, and traditional business has cornered all the markets."

Apart from the New York metropolitan area, the most attractive areas for entrepreneurial immigrants are southern Florida and Southern California. In the city of Hollywood, north of Miami, two of every three real estate transactions in recent months have been made by French Canadians. Fearful of the economic chaos that could result from the possible secession of Quebec from the Canadian Confederation, some 10,000 Canadians (Anglos as well as French) have settled in southern Florida. The Miami area has also attracted a stream of Jamaicans who find life under Prime Minister Michael Manley's "democratic socialism" increasingly oppressive.

The influx of well-to-do foreigners to California in the past two years or so has resulted in the biggest real estate boom in Los Angeles since the invention of the cinematograph. An estimated 20% of all property in the chic Beverly Hills-Brentwood-Bel Air area is now foreign owned. Iranians have nicknamed Loma Vista Drive "Aga Sheik Hadi Avenue," after the street where many lived in Tehran. Says Elaine Young, a Beverly Hills real estate broker who has sold palatial properties to foreigners from many countries: "Southern California has become the world's rich melting pot."

The newcomers often lead low-key lives for fear of kidnapings and potential retaliation against their families back home. The Iranians, for example, are seldom to be seen in fashionable bistros or stores. (One high-living exception is Henry Hakim, 24, who claims to own one of Southern California's biggest trading companies; he says that he ships back home to Iran 85% of all sunglasses sold in that country-where everyone, it seems, wears sunglasses.) Nonetheless, the new immigrants show a certain style wherever they settle. The Europeans, in particular, tend to have a sleek insouciance that immediately sets them apart on an avenue or in a living room. Their businesses, from boutiques to watering places, are conducted with Continental cachet. While the new Americans often get together for social occasions that may include an afternoon of soccer, an evening of disco dancing or a meal at one of their favored restaurants (La Boite in Manhattan, for example, or Wong Kai in Miami or Ma Maison in Los Angeles), they tend to assimilate easily into American life. Indeed, many Europeans enjoy the openness of their new neighbors, after the clannishness that marks the social life of the old countries.

British-born Reggie Mitchell, 55, who was an officer in the Indian army under the raj, worked his way across the U.S. as a book salesman, hardhat, lumberjack and journalist before opening Reggie's British Pub in Atlanta's splendiferous Omni International complex on Battle of Britain Day (Sept. 15) two years ago. "Even my fellow lumberjacks accepted me here without any questions about who I was or where I came from," he recalls. "The generosity of the people and the mobility of society here are very appealing. There is a resiliency that was missing in the U.K." Reggie's customers are sufficiently resilient to applaud his occasional recitals of Kipling, delivered in a baritone over the Bass.

Bettina Sulzer, 29, whose family is prominent in Switzerland, deals with European clients at Manhattan's prestigious Andre Emmerich art gallery. Says the slender, demure Bettina: "I am into an American group. I don't want to hang around with Europeans as a group. The jet set I certainly don't want to be with." Though her family has always trotted the globe--her grandmother was the last survivor of the Titanic when she died in 1972--she spends her vacations exploring America: this summer she will go to Wyoming, sleeping in a tepee on a ranch owned by friends.

This rich infusion of brains and guts has produced countless success stories in a variety of fields. A galleria of notables:

John Casablancas, 34, a member of an old Spanish family that fled the Franco regime, was educated in Switzerland, Spain and Germany, worked in Belgium, Spain, Brazil and France before moving to the U.S. in 1977. His eight-year-old model agency in Paris, Elite, is Europe's biggest. It was only "natural" for him to start another Elite in New York; in its first full year the agency expects to gross at least $4 million. Though he keeps an apartment in Paris and a farm in southern France, his base is a four-bedroom East Side Manhattan apartment that he shares with blonde Model Jeanette Christiansen. Another of Casablancas' stars is red-haired Yasmine Sokal, 23, a toplofty (5 ft. 11 in.) top model who was born in Munich but has French citizenship. Conveniently, Yasmine--who was the face on Bloomingdale's shopping bag last year--shares an opulent apartment overlooking Central Park with Marco Glaviano, 35, a Sicilian-born fashion photographer who also intends to settle in the U.S. "Here I feel all this creative energy," says Glaviano. "Everyone in the arts who has something to say is here. You get ideas even if you don't want to."

Giorgio Laurent!, 33, worked for his Italian family's thriving manufacturing concern in Milan before deciding that his future lay in the U.S. With his German-born wife Iris, Countess zu Dohna-Lauck, 28, he moved to New York in 1974 and started a real estate investment concern that grossed nearly $10 million last year and may double that sum this year. Most of his business is with fellow Europeans. Laurenti's scholarly partner, Roberto Riva, 38, was born in Peru of Italian ancestry, earned his degrees in Italy, owned a prosperous oil trading company in Houston and decided to settle permanently in the U.S. Says Laurenti: "Here you get rewarded for your merits, not for what your father has done." Michael Garstin, 29, a British-born London School of Economics graduate, came to the U.S. in 1974 as a trainee with the Chase Manhattan Bank. Says he: "I wanted to be nearer the source of power." His Scottish girlfriend, Annemarie Cairns, also 29, had a good job in a London public relations firm and did not initially share Michael's enthusiasm for New York when they married two years ago. While Michael is an up-and-coming executive at the bank, Annemarie has started her own public relations agency; after only seven months, it is already in the black. Says she: "You can't be weak-spirited in America. It can be very encouraging but very ruthless." On a personal note, she adds: "I can't help being charged here. My senses are heightened and I'm continually on edge. I keep saying, 'Wow! Is this really happening?' " Jacques Murphy, 46, notwithstanding his surname, is a French-descended Quebecois whose family has lived in Canada for five generations. Last September Monsieur Murphy and his wife Pierrette, also 46, loaded their two children and household belongings into two cars for the 1,654-mile trip from Montreal to Hollywood, Fla. Murphy had sold his insurance brokerage business, an office building and their house. The reasons for their departure, according to Murphy, were increasing governmental intervention in business, a flat economy and the prospect of Quebec's secession. In Florida, the Murphys became owners of a 26-unit motel and apartment complex on the heavily traveled north-south Interstate AlA. They paid $100,000 for the place, spent more than $40,000 to refurbish it from reception room to flagstaff, which now flies the Maple Leaf and the blue and white Quebec flag, along with the Stars and Stripes. With an eye to fellow emigres from Quebec, Murphy has ordered a sign saying PARLONS FRANc,AIS. Quand meme, the Murphys insist they want to become Americans and "live the American way."

Philip Wong, 35, was executive vice president of a supermarket and department-store chain in Jamaica and owned three Chinese restaurants and a food-packaging plant. He, his American-born wife Barbara, 28, their two children and nine of his ten brothers and sisters came to the U.S. to escape the threatening political climate and lawless atmosphere of Jamaica. Wong has a highly successful Chinese-Polynesian restaurant in the Miami Omni International complex, feels that the U.S. is "the last bastion of democracy and free enterprise."

Maria de Conceic,ao, 32, was born in Portugal and worked for six years in Denmark creating tapestries and clothing that she calls "wearable art" before moving to Washington, D.C., four years ago. She has had twelve shows of her work, including the chasuble she made for then Dean Francis Bowes Sayer Jr. of Washington Cathedral; the garment is on exhibit this month at the Vatican. Maria, who is married to American Patrick Heininger, a lawyer for the World Bank, has a contract for a book on her design and collage techniques. Says she: "This is the fourth country in which I have made a home, and definitely the last." Ali Daghighfekr, 30, comes from an Iranian family that owns the Middle East's largest manufacturer of home appliances. Uncertain of the future of private enterprise in Iran, he set up an import-export business in Los Angeles last year. Says he: "I don't think Americans really appreciate America. If I marry and have children, I think they will thank me for allowing them to be born American."

These worldly wise immigrants do not necessarily share what Novelist Saul Bellow called the "kiss-the-ground-at-Ellis-Island attitude." Many are the shards and barbs on the road to becoming American. U.S. television is a big turn-off for Europeans. So, at least initially, are permissive child rearing, much so-called gourmet food, gun-toting cops, blah-blah cocktail parties, football and baseball, bubble gum, littered streets, first-naming on first encounter, and such other indue -ers of culture shock as the warning on a hotel dressing table that greeted one European couple on their first night in New York: YOUR DAY ENDS AT 1 P.M.

Generally, though, the first days settle into exciting weeks and rewarding months, and the most tentative of new citizens begins to sound like a charter member of the D.A.R. Ask David John Bickerstaff, 32, a British automotive engineer who moved to Detroit in 1973, owns a four-bedroom home with swimming pool and a vacation cottage in northern Michigan. "When I meet a cynical guy in the U.S.," says Bickerstaff, "I tell him: 'Why don't you go to England and live? You'll come back a happy American.' " --Michael Demarest

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