How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels

For the time I spent in India, most of them eat their meals at street stalls throughout the day. Those that do have home cooked meals, often have housemaids that do all of that super labor intensive cooking. Even the relatively poor, have even poorer people working below them at home!

> The "killer app" here appears to be a lack of resources beyond established relationships. Because of this, whole families were willing to spend their time doing work that most Americans feel is not worth their time.

I really dislike this argument. It makes middle-class Americans sound like a bunch of ungrateful churls, because they think that is beneath them (at the price the employer is willing to pay, but that part is always left unsaid).

I don't call my landlord an ungrateful churl, because he thinks that my for his apartment is beneath him. Yet, this is a consistent argument whenever an employer-employee relationship comes up. No shit, I don't want to pick strawberries for $5/hour, when my rent is $2250/month. That's not because manual labour is beneath me.

The thing is - at a low enough price point, no work is worth anyone's time.

Those family members were probably working for below minimum wage. Surprise - their business was successful, compared to one where you have to hire employees, and pay them a minimum/living wage, and have an inflexible schedule of interest payments to whomever fronted the money for you to start the business, etc, etc.

It's not culture. It's economics.

The story totally checks out. I moved from Boston to San Francisco in 2006, did a cross country drive. Back then we only had flip phone, so I would use my laptop and The Microsoft Streets software with a GPS. Every day, around 3 PM, I would pull in into the parking lot and locate a Motel 30 or 40 miles ahead using the GPS and Streets software, and call and book a room.

8 out of 11 motels I stayed in were owned and run by Gujjus (Gujaratis, originally from the state of Gujarat in India). I was really surprised by this, because until then, I was only used to seeing East Indians working either in Tech or in Gas Stations, 7/11s.

Being a 1st generation Indian immigrant myself, almost always the owners would relate to me and tell me their immigrant story. And yes, almost all of them said the same thing the story mentions, i.e. borrowing money from family to buy a run-down / cheap motel business, live in it and work on it. One of them even shared their Gujju dinner with me as I'd arrive late and all the restaurants were closed in the Area ( Eureka, CA)...

Not all of them carried the business forward though. 1 guys son was working to be an Airforce Pilot and another's daughter was going to Law School. As told by their fathers neither one wanted anything to do with the Motel business, but they put in their work as kids, working at the motel while off school and such.

After moving to San Francisco, I met another Indian-American "Patel" , born to Indian immigrant parents. He too had a family run motel in Portland and would tell me stories of how everyone in the family had to pitch in to make it work. Gujjus are hard working people and I really admire their work ethics and grit.

I think both of your are correct, but to add another problem, its that there is sort of the understanding that a family member isn't going to try and get your house/car/whatever taken away to pay off the debt. So, family loans are often viewed more as gifts. I'm not going to give a family member 1/2 my life savings as a gift until it becomes an inheritance, unless I really believe in the business and am getting some kind of equity stake/collateral in return i'm not going to be making a "loan".

Plus, its one thing to "invest" in someone buying an asset, like a house/motel/gas station/CNC mill/whatever, vs loaning someone money to start a graphics art business where the money is going to basically pay "salary" and once its spent there isn't anything left to sell when the business fails.

Although, the one common thing I've seen a couple times, is an uncle/whatever paying for a college or a trade (like nursing) school under the "teach a man to fish" theory.

It's sort of common knowledge in India that Gujaratis, Sindhis, Punjabis and Malayalis (Keralites) are generally pretty enterprising and are often businessmen, both within India and abroad. There can be other such Indian communities too, of course. These are just the ones I have heard of (from childhood) as tending to be more so.

For example, the Patels in the US are the topic of this thread; then there are lots of Punjabis (which includes Sikhs) in Canada; Sindhis, I've heard, are many in Hong Kong; and many Keralites in the Gulf. Again, I don't mean to rule out other places where these or other Indians could have gone, these are just the ones I am more familiar with, and may have relatively high concentrations. Be interesting to know if there are other places where particular groups have gone and done well.

Of course, lots of Indians went to Fiji and Malaysia too, I've read, although those may have mostly gone as plantation labor initially (and some to Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, etc.), during British colonial times. Don't know how those are doing now.

On a side note, when I visited Kuala Lumpur once, I tried out some Malaysian (South) Indian food; it was both similar and in some ways different to South Indian food in India. I guess it is both because they use some different local Malaysian ingredients, and because of the long time of separation from India must have made their cuisine evolved to be somewhat different. It was interesting stuff, though.