This must include the ones running 99.9% of the convenience stores in the USA.
“This must include the ones running 99.9% of the convenience stores in the USA.”
Many (not all) of such Pakistani immigrants to the U.S., who found work running convenience stores, are Pakistani Christians who were tired of conditions back home created by their Muslim countrymen.
Many are not Pakistani, but Indian and among the Indians most are not Muslim, most are Hindu or Sikh.
Immigrants are attracted to such businesses, because many feel that without “connections”, without established networks in an industry or a company that they believe native Americans have an advantage in, running such businesses has an advantage, to them, because it requires mostly only their own capital, and their own willingness to work hard.
The only reason so many from one immigrant group gravitate, over time, to a particular type of business, is friends and relatives who have already made the immigrant transition have the most knowledge, with which to offer assistance, in the type of business THEY went into.
For instance, some “Asian” groups (particularly Koreans) now seem to dominate places like “Dry Cleaners”. Why? Because many of their Korean friends and relatives who preceded them here had previously entered that type of business and could help their new immigrant friends and relatives get into that same business as well.
In a generation or two, their children will have followed their American peers into all kinds of industries (NOT mom and dad’s business), and after some period of time “convenience stores”, “Dry Cleaners” and many other types of businesses will become dominated by some other immigrant group. It’s a dynamic, organic social and economic course the nation has seen throughout its history.