Economic Migrants Back In The 90's

I will never forget my time working in London many years ago as many of my clients were Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and some from India. What made them unique was they were new to a country and already had their own businesses. They were not a strain on the economy, but were adding to it in some way.

what impressed me the most was they were prepared to sacrifice x amount of years to gain financial independence. How they achieved this was even more remarkable as they would buy a Newsagents or corner shop in a community not as one family but 3 or 4 all chipping in. One family would run that business whilst everyone stayed upstairs and got jobs doing what ever they could.

The money at the end of the month would be combined with living expenses set aside everything else went on paying the business off. Within a year or two that was accomplished and then another Newsagents would be purchased using the exact same method with everyone chipping in and paying it off.

within 10 years all 4 families have their own businesses and are all better off for their sacrifices. They do this for their children as they can now be educated and under no circumstances want them running a corner shop as they expect them to become doctors or lawyers.

I used to understand what they were all doing as it made such perfect sense even though it is a hard way to get ahead in life. Some of the people I got to know would do 2 or 3 different jobs a day starting at 4am in the morning delivering milk and finishing at midnight being a cashier at a petrol station. Hard work with stupid hours never killed anyone if you have a set goal in mind. This is not for everyone but shows you how bad things must have been that they left that behind.

They saw the opportunity to better themselves, but more for their children and I respect that. These were at the time the early economic migrants back then that we see boat loads of now. I would say this has been happening for decades already, but just not on the same scale. The Sri Lankans and Bangladeshi's had taken over from the Indian's as that was their domain up until then. Every newsagent was run by a Mr Patel and it suddenly had a mega long name changing ownership to another nationality. If you know Sri Lankans they don't have simple surnames and is an easy give away of their nationality.

With economic hardships everywhere I was wondering what opportunities are out there as decent Newsagents or corner shops will be like hens teeth right now.

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