For Immigrants, a Ripple Effect

"We come from big families. We like to be together," Aboubaker said.

But at $10 a meal, eating out has become too much of a luxury. Shortly after 1 p.m., Aboubaker pulled over to a curb and popped the trunk of his cab to reveal his new lunchtime ritual: a small plastic container that his wife had filled with chickpeas and a few torn pieces of injera.

Other cabbies have adopted the same practice, said Habesha's co-owner, Yared Mamo. He estimated that at least 70 percent of his business came from the cabdrivers. "It's very serious. Our earnings are down like 20 or 30 percent," he said, surveying his empty restaurant on a recent afternoon. "Even when the cabdrivers do come, they end up sharing a plate between two or three or maybe four people."

One restaurant on the strip has closed. Another has stopped serving lunch. Mamo said he is planning to change the menu to appeal more to non-Africans.

There are signs that Korean business owners who once catered almost exclusively to their tightknit community are also trying to branch out. Sang K. Lee, owner of Spa World, a Korean-style luxury bathhouse in Centreville, said he has been trying to make up for a recent decline in Korean customers by advertising in publications that serve immigrants from countries such as Russia and Turkey that also have a tradition of using bathhouses.

"It was difficult at first because of the language barrier," Lee said with a chuckle. "But I found a translator, and now it's working fine. It's interesting. I'm getting to know all these Russian people."

But if immigrants are modifying some practices, they are reinforcing others.

Low-income Latino immigrants for whom it was customary to cover part of the mortgage by renting out rooms are taking the practice to new levels. Francisco Ramirez, a Salvadoran sewer-pipe layer who was laid off two months ago, was renting two bedrooms to relatives in his brick colonial in Herndon. Now he has decided to bring in a sister and a niece as well.

The move increases his household to nine people, but with a $3,000-plus monthly mortgage and a teenage son to support, Ramirez said, "it's the only option."

Because Latino immigrants are so heavily concentrated in construction work, they appear to have been hardest hit by the mortgage crisis and subsequent housing slump. In the first quarter of 2008, their unemployment rate reached 7.5 percent nationally, and though it dropped to 6.4 percent by the third quarter, it remains higher than the 5.8 percent rate among non-Latino, native-born residents.

Patty Santamaria, who runs a package-mailing service at the Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, said rising unemployment has had a dramatic impact on one bittersweet holiday custom of low-income Central American immigrants: Every November, mothers and fathers hit the malls to buy Christmas presents for the children they left in their home countries, then pack the gifts into large boxes to mail in time for the big day.

"Last year, the line of people with packages to send was enormous, all the way to the cafeteria," Santamaria said, gesturing toward a dining area several yards away. "But we haven't mailed a single package today. . . . And we've only sent about 10 this whole month."