For the purposes of this essay I shall be concentrating mainly on the Los Angeles Garment industry as this is an area of manufacturing highly represented by new Asian immigrants, especially Koreans and longer established Mexican immigrants, many of whom are working illegally. We will also be focusing on the garment industry as it is also one of the largest industries in the Los Angeles area. But we will also be taking into account the affect Vietnamese, Chinese and other ‘Asian’ groups have had on the shaping of other elements of immigrant enterprise in Los Angeles. We must also bear in mind that many immigrant Asians occupy professional positions within banking, medicine and computers.

The garment industry is one of the major international industries, with most countries in the world involved in it at some level, because of the incredibly cheap production costs in many of these countries apparel production is shifting from the developed to the developing countries. Consequently, the United States, which houses a vast garment industry, is facing fierce competition from the abund

Considering that out of the entire population of Los Angeles only 40% are graduates the markedly higher figure of 64% for the Asian populace bears out the argument above that Asian workers are very hard working and lay a lot of stock in improving there position within society and the economy, educational achievement is always a good marker of a persons work ethic and desire for self improvement. They are essentially investing in their future, Mexican immigrants on the other hand are mostly uneducated, only 15% having graduated from college.

Another reason why the ‘Asian’ population of LA is so entrepreneur heavy is due in part to the immigration act of 1990 which granted citizenship to any foreigners who had 1 million dollars or over to invest in a business in the US. The vast majority of the immigrants who took advantage of the act were from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, by 1992 73 millionaire immigrants had entered the US, of whom 80% were Asian. The number of Asian millionaires will surely increase as groups such as the Chinese reap the returns on their investments.

ance of cheap goods these mostly third world countries export . In response to this, American manufacturers have moved much of their production abroad to countries such as Mexico, where the labour costs are a fraction of those at home, for example the clothing giant Guess moved 70% of its production to Mexico in 1997 . Mexico has now outstripped China as the major exporter of apparel goods to the United States. Although they have most of their apparel goods produced abroad, the US manufacturers still retain control of ordering, marketing and distribution. It is interesting to see that there is a parallel in the increase in US imports paired to a decline in employment in the home apparel industry. Not all manufacturers have moved production abroad though, as we shall see later, but of the $178 billion spent on apparel in the United States in 1995, $91 billion was spent on imports, a very significant figure.

As I have mentioned above this non co-ethnic employer to employee relationship is particular to Los Angeles, in most garment producing industries in American cities and in Europe, there is normally a co-ethnic relationship between contractor and employee, for example the Chinese in New York tended on the whole to employ other Chinese immigrants, thus creating an ethnic economy, an economy based upon strong ethnic ties, one where ethnic entrepreneurs employ co-ethnic employees. It would be wrong to state that there was no co-ethnic employer to employee relationships in Los Angeles, for of course there are, Vietnamese contractors employ mostly Vietnamese workers and Chinese contractors recruit solely Chinese employees . But it cannot be denied that there is a great deal of non co-ethnic employer to employee businesses. Thus creating there own self-sufficient ethnic economy, this means that immigrants now have two markets in which they gain employment, the ethnic economy and the general labour market.

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