Filipino and Korean Immigrants in Small Business: A Comparative Analysis

The 1965 Immigration Act has accelerated immigration from Asian countries, especially from the Philippines and Korea. Nearly a half million Filipinos and about four hundred thousand Koreans were admitted to this country as legal immigrants between 1970 and 1982.' In recent years Filipinos comprised the second largest immigrant group after Mexican immigrants. Koreans ranked third overall in terms of numbers. As a result, recent immigrants constitute the vast majority for both groups. The 1980 Census indicates that about 65 percent of Filipino Americans and 82 percent of Korean Americans are foreign born.* Filipino and Korean immigrants are very similar in their pre-immigrant background and motives for imrnigrati~n.~ Both were recruited from the educated, urban, middle-class stratum of their societies. Most were engaged in white-collar and professional occupations. The vast majority of Filipinos and Koreans, unlike Southeast Asian refugees, immigrated on a voluntary basis to promote their life chances. In spite of these similarities, however, these two immigrant groups show one significant difference in their occupational adjustment in the United States. While Koreans have earned their reputation as a trading minority comparable to the Jews, Filipinos are greatly underrepresented in small business. The 1980 Census, for example, indicates that 12.2 percent of those Koreans who immigrated between 1970 and 1980 are self-employed in comparison to 1.6 percent of Filipino worker^.^ The proportion of self