For Immigrants, a Ripple Effect

Tough Times Trickle Down Through Newcomers' Networks

While the economy's tailspin is spreading pain across the Washington region, it has hit many of the area's close-knit immigrant communities with particular speed and force. The dependence on one another that has contributed so much to their economic success has now created a domino effect in which the misfortune of one segment of the group almost immediately affects the rest.

Ethiopian cabdrivers suffering from a drop-off in customers have cut back drastically on lunches at the District's Ethiopian restaurants, which, in turn, are now grappling with how to survive.

Korean construction contractors and real estate investors reeling from the housing crisis are having trouble affording tuition at the area's hagwons -- the private, after-school academies to which Korean parents traditionally send their children. At least one has closed, and another, Best Academy, with branches in Springfield and Sterling as well as Ellicott City, has slashed its prices by almost 40 percent.

The consequences reach beyond the financial, altering local immigrant culture in small but significant ways. Economic pressures are straining some cherished customs and strengthening others. Many immigrants are stepping outside their comfort zones to participate more in the broader economy.

The shifts are particularly evident among the District's hundreds of Ethiopian cabdrivers, whose distress over losing customers is compounded by the city's recent introduction of a meter system that cabbies contend charges some of the lowest rates in the country.

Negussie Gugsa, who has been driving a cab since he sought political asylum in the United States 10 years ago, said business is so bad that the association of Ethiopian air force veterans to which he belongs recently decided to cut its monthly dues from $20 to $10. The money is mainly used to help new arrivals get on their feet, he said, and is part of a tradition of communal obligation at the core of Ethiopian identity.

"When I came, they paid three months of my rent and all my food. . . . I didn't have anything, so it would have been very tough without them," he said on a recent morning on a break from his second job as a mechanic in Northeast Washington. "I have always been committed to do the same for the next person, and I feel so bad that we don't have the chance to do that now."

Abdulrezak Aboubaker, a fellow Ethiopian driver who had stopped for an oil change, nodded sympathetically. Last year, Aboubaker said, he could expect to make as much as $200 after 10 hours of work. Now, he's lucky if he gets $100 for 16 hours.

Aboubaker, 42, got in his cab and started driving toward Northwest Washington. It was the sort of drizzly day that used to send pedestrians scrambling for a cab. But an hour of circling brought no takers.

Aboubaker's cellphone started vibrating. It was his mortgage company calling to discuss his latest missed payment. He hit a button to send the call to voice mail and stuffed the phone back into his jacket.

About 12:30 p.m., Aboubaker turned onto a sparsely populated stretch of Ninth Street NW, where almost every other storefront is an Ethiopian restaurant. A year ago, the strip would have been packed with taxis on lunch break, Aboubaker observed. He almost always stopped at Habesha, where the owners knew before he opened his mouth that he would order either kifto, a kind of beef tartare seasoned with cardamom and other spices, or tibs, lamb fried with onions and peppers.

For a man who spends most of his day driving strangers, the daily meal with fellow drivers was more than just a chance to catch up with friends and talk politics, Aboubaker said. It was a way to recapture a slice of the life he left behind in Ethiopia, where gathering for meals is so central to the culture that people eat from the same enormous, pancakelike piece of bread, called injera.