Jose Barahona (left) came to this country from El Salvador with almost nothing. Today his company employs 450 people. (By Bill O'Leary – The Washington Post)

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 31, 1998; Page A11

Twenty-five years ago, Jose Barahona, one of 12 children of a poor farmer in El Salvador, came to the Washington area to seek his fortune. He waited tables, emptied hospital bedpans and planted bushes. In 1978, while living in a roach-infested apartment in Gaithersburg, he started a small janitorial business.

Today his Falls Church company, Able Services, employs 450 people to clean such mammoth facilities as Fort Belvoir and Bethesda Naval Medical Command. He didn't call his company Barahona Services – "in America, you don't put a foreign name" – but he has sponsored a lot of Salvadorans for green cards. He and his family live in an elegant house in Great Falls, and he has paid for a hospital and church in his father's village.

"Many people who come here get frustrated, but I kept jumping at the top of the wall," said Barahona, 54, a shy man whose English is still a bit rough. "I worked 15 years with no vacation, no holidays, seven days a week at a shabby desk in a basement. Now the results are in my pocket."

In El Salvador, "if you're not from a rich family you don't go nowhere," said Barahona, whose son wants to be a lawyer. "In this country, anyone who has self-discipline can be a success."

The Washington region is full of immigrants – from Ethiopian restaurant owners to Korean dry cleaners to Indian engineers – who describe similar odysseys of working hard and pinching pennies to build a comfortable life they could not have imagined in their native lands.

Some, like Barahona, arrived with little but burning ambition. Some came as students and parlayed a college degree into a niche in American society. Some were granted visas because they or someone in their immediate family had a job.

Most area immigrants arrive on family visas. But one in four – double the national ratio – is here on a work visa to take a job an American can't be found to fill or is an immediate family member of someone with such a visa. From 1992 to 1996 alone, about 40,000 foreign-born who came to the region gained entry to the United States this way. Two out of three were professionals or managers in such fields as health care, scientific research, education and technology. One in four filled a nanny or other low-skilled job.

According to 1996 Census figures, 97 percent of Maryland legal immigrants older than 16 and in the labor force were employed, as were 93 percent of Virginia's. In Maryland, 45 percent of legal immigrants age 25 and older were college graduates; in Virginia, 47 percent were.

"Most of my friends had a good education before they came here, and they have found positions everywhere, from Capitol Hill to computers to playing the violin," said George Liu, 35, a Fairfax County resident who emigrated from China, completed a master's degree and now works for a public relations firm in Washington.

But the initial adjustment wasn't easy. "When you have an accent, you have an extra burden to prove you are capable," Liu said. He and his wife "tried to act and even think American" to fit in. Over time, "people came to value us for what we brought with us, too."

Educated immigrants, however, cannot land good jobs without competent English. The problem has been especially acute for war refugees. Cut off from federal assistance after six months, they are pressed to support themselves as quickly as they can – even though many are still struggling to learn the language.

Unskilled and uneducated immigrants have the hardest time. At the Casa de Maryland employment center in Langley Park, as many as 75 men arrive each morning – hoping for day labor work painting apartments or mowing lawns. For those here illegally, the situation is even worse.

"We plan to stay till immigration gets us," said a Latino man, waiting with other would-be day laborers at 7 one morning at an industrial intersection on Four Mile Run. "There is so much misery in our countries. Here, you can earn $50 a day."

Dan Stein, director of the D.C.-based Federation for Immigration Reform, warns that the United States "is sitting on the lid of a melting pot that could boil over" if the number of immigrants isn't drastically reduced. He is particularly concerned about granting amnesty to some illegal immigrants – who then sponsor other relatives.

"If they are poorly educated, their relatives will be, too," said Stein, who also wants the well-educated legal immigrants to go home, too.

"Yes, they pay taxes, but they also fuel more immigration," he said. "If Washington had no immigration for 25 years, there would be less congestion, a larger middle class, better schools ... [and] a stronger economic climate for less-skilled workers."

But Virginia state Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), who co-owns a 24-hour Amoco station in Annandale with a Taiwanese partner, extols the hard work and honesty of his Iranian emissions inspector, Tunisian and Vietnamese mechanics, Taiwanese and Ethiopian station attendants, and cashiers from Ghana, Vietnam and the Philippines.

"If you took every foreign-born worker in America and shipped them back to where they came from, within 24 hours the country would come to a halt," Saslaw said. "And within a week it would be in Chapter 11."

One way immigrants find jobs, if not prosperity, is through informal networks often based on family or native country connections. Many Nigerians and Indians work as cab drivers, usually for small taxi companies owned by other Nigerians or Indians. Many Ethiopians work in parking garages and convenience stores. Many Koreans operate convenience markets or dry cleaners.

"People we have helped in the past become our eyes and ears for the newcomers, letting us know of openings at 7-Elevens or garages or McDonald's," said Tsehaye Teferra, director of the Ethiopian Community Development Center in Arlington.

The local industry most heavily dominated by one immigrant group is office cleaning, where about 70 percent of the crews are Central American. Many are part-time workers like Joaquin Chavez, 20, supplementing low-wage day jobs with evening cleaning shifts.

At 2 p.m. every weekday, this Salvadoran finishes his seven-hour stint at a fast-food restaurant in Arlington, then rides the bus to Tysons Corner. He cleans offices from 4 to 10 p.m., then catches a late bus home. He makes less than $400 a week, sticks to a monthly budget, avoids bars and spends his few spare hours with his girlfriend.

"I know a lot of Spanish guys who have gone to ruin here. They fall into drink or drugs, they buy things on credit they can't afford. Not me," Chavez said. "I came here with no illusions except to work, save money and help my family back home."

An increasing number of local immigrants have found economic stability and cultural familiarity by helping other immigrants. They teach them English, help them send money overseas, explain tax and immigration laws, counsel immigrants in their native language, or translate for government agencies.

"We have to be the mentors, the gatekeepers, the friends who explain how things work," said Khalid Umerani, 33, a Pakistani insurance agent who has both immigrant and American-born clients – and jokes that he has to compete for business "with a lot of Bobs and Jims and Mikes."

Carlos Barragan, a Bolivian immigrant who lives in Burtonsville, started out as a math teacher but switched to counseling in Arlington when he saw Latino students struggling with deeper problems.

"So many of these kids ... spend their time hanging on the street or watching TV" while their parents work two shifts, said Barragan, 30. "They can't imagine becoming a doctor or a lawyer. I want them to dream they can be somebody. ... As an immigrant, this gives more meaning to my life."