"Every time that flag's unfurled/They're coming to America" -- Neil Diamond's "America"
Immigrants come from all over the world to share in the American dream.
They are drawn to a country where opportunities abound, "where you can be anything or do anything," as Japanese immigrant Michi Yaganishita puts it.
In this land of opportunity, grateful immigrants are making their mark, excelling in a variety of endeavors--and seizing the initiative to become American entrepreneurs.
With that in mind, meet immigrant entrepreneurs from five countries.
Russia
Simona and Mikhail Ioffe were among the last of a wave of Jewish refugees accepted into the U.S. in the 1980s. The Ioffes immigrated to Lowell, Massachusetts, along with Simona's parents, the family dog and their 12-year-old son, Yevgeny.
The Ioffes had an extra complication, however: Simona had taught Yevgeny, who is deaf, to speak and read lips. He attended regular school in Russia and had adapted to the hearing world.
"So he was OK in Russian," Simona recalls, "but doing the same thing in English--we thought that would be impossible."
It wasn't, of course. Yevgeny attended Clark School for the Deaf in Northhampton, Massachusetts, on a scholarship, learned English and married a hearing woman.
Life had been difficult for the Ioffes as Jews in Russia. Even finding a job was tough. But it wasn't easy finding employment in America, either, for a pair of engineers who spoke limited English.
Eventually, Mikhail found a job as a technician at Fishman Transducers Inc., now a leading company in acoustic amplification for professional musicians. Simona soon joined Mikhail there as an assembler. Mikhail was quickly promoted to designer. He worked alongside owner Larry Fishman for 10 years, making pre-amplifiers that take a source signal from a guitar, for example, and pass it on to an amplifier.
"It was one of the best stages of our lives," Simona says, "and we were involved in all aspects of product development, customer support and troubleshooting--so we got to know the process from the inside." That proved useful when the couple decided to pursue their own business.
A couple of years after leaving Fishman to pursue other endeavors, they decided to plunge back into the acoustic industry as entrepreneurs. They had come to America with nothing but $200 and two suitcases. Now they were part of the American middle class.
"We had a car. We had a house. Now it was time for the last dream," Simona says. "We wanted to own our own company."
Simona knew that she and Mikhail could make the best pre-amp on the market. But she was canny enough to realize that simply building the best product wouldn't bring the world running to their door.
"We needed something absolutely unique," she says.
Pre-amps all have batteries, and musicians typically replace the battery--at about $2 a pop--before any gig. So Simona told her astonished husband to design a pre-amp that didn't require a battery.
The Ioffes designed it, patented it and established Mi-Si Electronics Design Inc. It takes 60 seconds to charge the pre-amp before a performance.
In addition to her work with Mi-Si, Simona earned a Ph.D. in audiology She performs in-home hearing tests and prescribes hearing aids. She likes helping people and feels as though she's giving back to a country that's been good to her.
"We love Boston, we love the weather, we love America," she says. "We believe if you need to emigrate, this is the only place in the world where you can feel comfortable and be successful."