Tearing down walls

When Carlos Blum started his own business in his living room, he had all the typical challenges that new entrepreneurs face. But being an immigrant added the extra barriers of language and legislation.

Colombian-born and a U.S. resident since 2004, Blum is the owner of Century Business services, which provides accounting, tax and other services to help Birmingham-area Hispanic businesses grow. He laughs when he recalls the early days of his company.

“I started my business not in the garage, in my living room, and yes, I remember those days, and yeah, I was panicked because my wife doesn’t like to see many people in my home, especially the ones that work in [the] construction field because their boots have a lot of dust, and she has to clean the carpet,” Blum said.

But it is his experiences in Colombia and navigating the business world of Alabama that has helped Blum support other immigrant businesses for more than a decade.

He said he has seen many grow from tiny to large and successful.

“I found that the Hispanics came here to America, and they don’t know how to establish a business,” Blum said. “In America, we have a lot of regulations to establish a business, and maybe in their original country they don’t have the same regulations. And for that reason they try to establish businesses in the same way that they used to in their original country, and they fail.”

Responding to a need

It was this experience, in part, that made Hernan Prado seek out Blum to join a new Birmingham association for immigrant entrepreneurs: The New Americans Chamber of Commerce (NACC). Prado works at BBVA Compass and moved to the U.S. from Ecuador in 1995. Prado had his own business background, as he started a Hispanic marketing and media company not long after moving to Birmingham in 2003. He also helped form different Hispanic coalition groups across the state and was a member of the Hispanic Business Council in the Greater Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, which became the Birmingham Business Alliance (BBA).

Prado said he felt the BBA’s priorities began to shift from small business to corporate members a few years ago, leaving Birmingham’s smallest businesses underserved. Seeing a need, Prado created the New Americans Chamber of Commerce in 2014 with participation from as many immigrant groups as he could bring together.

“People are saying more and more — listening, I’m hearing this more and more now — that Birmingham is the right place to be if you want to start a business now. So opportunities are everywhere. What I don’t see is a network, a supportive network of organizations or groups that specifically help small business and specifically help new American small business owners. So that’s needed,” Prado said.

He is still the driving force behind the chamber, which operates on volunteers. However, there’s a lot of enthusiasm from members to make the chamber a success.

“There is a gap in Birmingham’s Chamber of Commerce that is so different from Atlanta’s Chamber of Commerce because they really only deal with corporate entities that are international, and there was nothing there for the small businesses,” said NACC board member Janet Hamm, who also helped found the Central Alabama Global Alliance (CAGA).

“What we’re trying to do is get involved in different cultures, because what we found — especially what I’ve seen — is in Birmingham we have the Japanese American Association; we have the Indian Cultural Society; we have the Hispanic [Interest Coalition of Alabama] (HICA) … Chinese American [Business Association of Birmingham]; there’s [Greater Birmingham] Korean [Association], the [Central Alabama] Caribbean [American Association], … and they didn’t talk to each other. They didn’t know what was going on. Plus, they didn’t know how to get word out about what they do,” she said.

 Regardless of their countries of origin, immigrants in Alabama face similar problems when trying to start a business, Prado said.

One of the most obvious is a language barrier, especially if government offices don’t have interpreters or training to bridge that gap. There’s also the problem that Blum sees frequently: New Americans don’t understand what forms to file or offices to visit in order to legally start their business.

“We know that small businesses are similar, but when you’re new to the country, knowing how to even first get your driver’s license before you can apply for the other licenses can be a little bit more challenging,” said NACC board member Vivian Mora, who was born in Brazil and immigrated to the U.S. in 2002. “There’s some special needs if you are a newcomer and just learning to adjust to a new country, a new language, a new culture that if you’re on the same boat, you’re going to realize it and try to make those adjustments.”

Prado said it’s also harder for immigrants to begin developing a credit history and have the skills and education they acquired prior to immigration recognized, especially in situations such as applying for a business loan. 

“We want to give honor to the expertise and knowledge and abilities of immigrants once they move here, because one of the biggest obstacles for us to develop a business or start a business or become more involved with the community is the fact that the United States does not recognize the history, whether it be economic or social or other, as part of the person when they move here,” Prado said.

The NACC’s goal is to help their members take on these challenges and successfully start their business. As a volunteer organization, Prado said the chamber is limited in what it can do right now. They host two events per year — the International Street Fair in May and a small business workshop in July.

The free workshop covered marketing, taxes, loans and insurance, Prado said, “so they will not make the same mistakes that we did, the people who are in business longer.”

The NACC also provides education and support for finances, loan applications, city meetings and the other thorny problems of new businesses.

If they can get paid staff members for the NACC in the future, Prado said that opens the door to more services.

One of his goals is to create a talent bank and criteria to demonstrate immigrants’ skills and knowledge “that can be measured in a way that can be used by the risk assessment at the financial institutions,” he said.

“I think [new Americans] need to be recognized as someone that is very capable of doing business here on any level, that they shouldn’t just be assigned to menial jobs,” Hamm said. “They’re extremely bright; most of them are well-educated; they care about themselves, their community and their family, and it really should be a melting pot of people. 

“We fought for this in the ’60s. I actually remember Linn Park a little bit, and it just seems like we as a city haven’t embraced other countries like we should.”

Continuing to grow

Mora pointed out that new American citizens can be great business owners, as people who are willing to start their lives in a whole new country are the same people who can face the uncertainties of entrepreneurship.

“We’ve heard that usually the new business owners, or especially if you’re a new immigrant, you’re willing to take the risk, and people that are new business owners, they’re willing to take the risk,” Mora said.

“My hat’s off to them for being that brave. In any capacity, it’s brave for an individual, foreign or otherwise, to take on the economy and succeed as a small business owner,” said Herb Underwood, a Decatur resident who heard about the NACC and came to Birmingham in July for the small business workshop.

Prado said he hopes the NACC can be a model for similar chambers in other cities and states. Underwood might be the first step toward that. Having learned about the chamber and attended the workshop, he said he thinks the idea could benefit his hometown.

“A lot of what we struggle with, we overlook some of the most obvious points. And what we have in Decatur are a number of new businesses, mom-and-pop businesses, that are foreigners that have moved to America,” Underwood said. “And at a time in Alabama when we’re taking a narrow focus on our foreign communities, ‘multicultural’ is maybe something people are running away from at a time when economics really dictate we run toward it, because that difference is maybe the spark that’s going to bring us back to where we want to be.”

Five years from now, Prado said he wants to see the New Americans Chamber as a much larger organization able to provide more services and unity to Birmingham’s immigrant community. Overall, he and his fellow board members want to see better communication in every step of the business-creation process.

“Against a lot of people’s opinions, I have to say that Birmingham has been very welcoming to me and to a lot of business owners that have been very successful,” Mora said. “We have big companies that have started from zero … we’re excited to see more and more.”