Immigration to the U.S. is steadily framed as an issue to be controlled, managed or punished. Immigrants are steadily derided for crossing the border with out authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. electorate.
This rhetoric has intensified when Donald Trump has been within the White Area. Trump and officers in his administrations have time and again characterised immigrants as a drain on nationwide sources.
However analysis on immigrants tells a distinct tale.
I’m a historian of industrial and tradition who examines how enterprises form and are formed by way of the societies and ancient contexts through which they perform. Since 2021 I’ve led the Gainesville Trade Historical past Challenge, a analysis initiative on the College of Florida that research the long-term patterns of town’s trade historical past.
Within reach historical past
Our challenge takes a close-by historical past means that acknowledges that companies round us, even small ones, are a part of the ancient file that we customers additionally actively form. Our staff of 10 researchers has performed in-depth interviews with greater than 40 trade homeowners and marketers in Florida.
About 22% to 23% of the state’s citizens – more or less 5 million other people – are overseas born. That is a lot upper than the national moderate of 14%.
In 2023, foreign-born Florida citizens made up nearly 50% of the staff hired in pillars of the state’s economic system, together with agriculture, tourism and building.
In 2025, one find out about discovered that 267,700 of those Florida immigrants – about 5% – have been marketers.
Our interviews exposed many tales that display how immigrant-founded companies can develop into acquainted establishments that outline a spot’s id. Those tales illustrate one of the vital techniques immigrants give a contribution to their communities.
Los angeles Aurora Latin Marketplace
The tale of Los angeles Aurora, a Latin grocery retailer that has operated for just about 25 years in Gainesville, demonstrates how companies are culturally embedded inside the neighborhood and the way immigrant-owned companies steadily are tied to long-term native networks.
Aurora Ynigo crossed the Mexico-U.S. border within the early Nineteen Nineties. She went directly to Miami, the place she met her husband, Peter. Within the past due Nineteen Nineties they moved from Miami to Gainesville for Peter’s activity. On the time there was once restricted get admission to to Hispanic merchandise within the college the town with about 180,000 citizens. So in 1999 the circle of relatives made up our minds to open a Latin retailer that Aurora would arrange.
For years the couple and their oldsters would create a weekly buying groceries checklist, which incorporated many pieces asked by way of shoppers and buddies who had immigrated to Gainesville from Peru, Cuba or Colombia. Then they’d pressure 400 miles to Miami, the place they’d search for the pieces everywhere the town, particularly in supermarkets there similar to Sedano’s and Presidente. They might then pressure again to Gainesville with brand new meals in large coolers to fill the racks at their location on College Road.
After 27 years in trade, Los angeles Aurora Latin Marketplace on College Road has its personal butcher counter, brand new produce and different pieces from throughout Latin The us and the Caribbean. It additionally makes fresh-baked Latin American breads, pastries and muffins. And it has grow to be a spot the place the Spanish-speaking neighborhood – a demographic that has grown significantly prior to now 10 years – can reliably to find acquainted merchandise.
Mary’s Cafe & Coin Laundry
For greater than 4 many years, Mary’s Café and Laundry has operated alongside Miami’s now-central and busy twenty seventh Road.
The trade has remained in the similar circle of relatives throughout 3 generations. It strains again to Eumelia Morales Fernández, who immigrated to Miami from town of Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1970. Like many immigrant girls, she first labored as a seamstress. She then were given a task in a shoe manufacturing facility ahead of purchasing a small grocery store together with her husband on thirty second Road in Miami in 1988.
After buying the construction the place the cafe and laundromat nonetheless stand, they put in washing machines and dryers and opened a small cafeteria along the laundromat. They named the trade Mary’s Cafe, after Eumelia’s daughter, who later ran the trade ahead of passing it directly to her personal daughter, Vicky, who these days manages it.
The present menu at Mary’s Cafe.
Photograph by way of the creator, taken in 2025, CC BY-NC-ND
Mary created the menu, which has modified little for the reason that cafe first opened. The cafe has its personal kitchen for tostadas and pastelitos, serving coladas and cortaditos day by day at this central Miami location. The whole lot remains to be made in-house.
The construction additionally properties some other small retail house, which is these days an eye fixed restore trade run by way of some other member of the circle of relatives. Prior to that, the distance was once house to a Chinese language takeout owned by way of some other Cuban circle of relatives.
I used to be in a position to interview each Eumelia and Vicky. Vicky informed me she has now not modified a lot in the way in which she coordinates paintings and provides at Mary’s. The largest trade she’s needed to make is finding out to make use of social media to advertise the trade.
sixteenth Road Diner
Gilberto Argoytia Miranda owns the sixteenth Road Diner. The diner is an icon of Gainesville’s southern delicacies and has been in operation for greater than 50 years.
Argoytia Miranda is the diner’s 8th proprietor – he bought it in 2021. He had enjoy within the sector from when he lived in Mexico Town, the place he had operated meals vehicles since 2010.
He knew he sought after to be within the eating place trade, however he didn’t instantly open a Mexican eating place, in spite of the restricted choice of them in Gainesville. As an alternative, he studied the native marketplace by way of running for quite a lot of eating places, together with handing over meals by way of DoorDash. This enjoy allowed him and his circle of relatives to achieve a deeper figuring out of the Gainesville meals scene.
The diner needed to deal with its soul, as Argoytia Miranda calls it, for the common clientele to stay coming. He and his circle of relatives didn’t need to change an eatery that carried native which means and custom. Actually, he acknowledges this continuity as an asset, since the position stays recognizable.
The sixteenth Road Diner in Gainesville, Fla., has been a fixture within the the town, whilst possession has modified fingers through the years.
Photograph by way of the creator, taken in November 2025, CC BY-NC-ND
Argoytia Miranda hardly adjustments the menu, as a result of he understands that’s what other people have preferred for years. He does now not see the want to reinvent the core of the eating place, its Southern-style cooking and the Americana setting.
Bit by bit, he informed me in 2025, he intends to experiment with including extra Latino taste to the menu. However new dishes will grow to be a part of the professional providing provided that shoppers experience them.
