Refugees Turn Entrepreneurs
By Kylene Kiang

Laura Lam came to New York City in 1980 with her husband, young daughter and $12 in her pocket. They were Vietnamese refugees, part of the first wave of “boat people” who fled the country after the Vietnam War.

The Lams arrived in the United States by plane, but the journey before that was a harrowing one. After the communist government forced those aligned with the South Vietnamese army out of their homes and businesses, Lam and her family fled the country, sailing down the Mekong River. They had lost everything.

Photo by Kylene Kiang

Laura Lam digs into a green papaya salad, one of the modern Vietnamese dishes she serves at her Upper West Side restaurant, Monsoon.

See Laura Lam at her Upper West Side restaurant Monsoon. See a graph reflecting Vietnamese refugee admission to the U.S. over three decades. See a graph showing the drop in refugee arrivals to the U.S. over the past ten years.

Spending three days and three nights on a crowded boat carrying more than 300 people, Lam didn’t know how to swim and was terrified the boat would sink.

“But at that time, you don’t know how to be scared,” she said. “It’s like gambling. If I have it, I have my freedom. If I don’t then I die in the sea.”

They spent nine difficult months at a refugee camp in Thailand, waiting to get their immigration papers approved. They lived in a hut made of palm branches. “When it rained all the water came in,” Lam says.

Many Vietnamese refugees have stories similar to Lam’s. There are approximately 1.2 million Vietnamese Americans in the United States, the largest population of Southeast Asian refugees to have settled here, according to the 2000 Census. And of the 13,010 Vietnamese Americans in New York City, 77 percent are foreign-born.

Although the largest wave of Vietnamese refugees arrived in the late ’70s, a steady stream continues to arrive in the states today. According to a 2004 study by the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, nearly 9,000 Vietnamese refugees sought asylum in the United States from 2000 to 2002.

Through years of hard work and much struggle, Lam, 62, has been able to make it and call herself a New Yorker. Since 1995, she has been the owner of Monsoon, a Vietnamese restaurant on the Upper West Side.

Lam was one of 95,200 Vietnamese refugees to arrive in America in 1980. Her family settled in a tiny apartment in the Bronx. “I thought it was so big,” she said. “But there was only a table and four chairs.”

Lam and her husband immediately began looking for work. With help from the International Rescue Committee, Lam started interviewing for jobs. After a short stint at a Chinatown bakery, she landed her dream job: an assistant chef position at the legendary Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center.

Though work at the Rainbow Room was grueling, Lam said she loved the challenge. During her six years on the job, she served dinner parties of more than 2,000, spent hours pounding rolls of beef Wellington, and learned from the best in the business. All the while she was developing ideas for a restaurant of her own.

In 1995, with the help of a private investor, she opened Monsoon on Amsterdam Avenue and 81st Street. The bustling restaurant offers a combination of flavors from her homeland, cooked with the techniques she has learned along the way.

Though Lam’s refugee status in the United States makes her eligible for special, low-interest business loans, she chose not to accept them. But for many struggling refugees and immigrants, there are means for financial help in the city.

One such option is the Microenterprise Development Program, funded by the New York Association of New Americans. Aimed at the city’s immigrants and refugees, the program has provided more than $3 million in small business loans, assisting 200 businesses in start-ups and expansions since 1996.

The philosophy of the micro-enterprise field is to provide financing to “unbankable” clients – new immigrants and refugees with no credit history – who wish to start a business, said Leonid Ostrovsky, manager of the refugee microloan program.

“It is usually mom and pop shops – a grocery and deli, alteration store, small restaurant, cab driver, car service, medical billing office, printing shop, and so on,” Ovstrovsky said.

Lam prides herself on being a self-made businesswoman. Years ago, she felt that too many people viewed refugees as freeloaders living off of government services. “The government has a good heart,” she said, but added that she never wanted to take the easy way out.

At first, “I had over 30 interviews, nobody hired me,” Lam explained. “They said, ‘You have no experience.’”

Today, she doesn’t believe in the phrase “no experience.” Most of the employees at Monsoon are immigrants. If they prove to be hard-working and reliable, then they deserve a chance to succeed, she said.

“I have freedom now,” she said. “I don’t need anybody helping me. I have hands. I can work, and I can have a job.”

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