PITTSBURGH (AP) - Open the door to most restaurant kitchens across the country, and you’ll see the positions of line cooks and many other positions filled by immigrants.
Not in Pittsburgh.
Although the restaurant industry is the largest employer of immigrants in the U.S., Pittsburgh does not mirror that trend.
That’s because there are so few immigrants here compared with those in other cities. In fact Pittsburgh is next to last in net immigration between 2012 and 2013 for 40 American cities, cited Chris Briem, regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Social and Urban Research.
And those immigrants who do arrive here tend to be more highly skilled and less likely to start their careers in restaurant kitchens. The lack of immigrant help is translating into dire staff shortages in local restaurants. It’s a need that will increase as the restaurant industry continues to grow here and nationwide. The situation has become more pronounced with the closing of Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in 2011 - whose graduates helped staff many of the local kitchens - and the increasing number of restaurants opening in the region.
As the second-largest private sector employer in the U.S., the restaurant industry employs 2.2 million foreign-born workers or 8 percent of foreign-born workers in the labor force, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey. Twenty-four percent of individuals employed at restaurants are foreign-born, compared with 18 percent for the overall economy. Among restaurant chefs, 44 percent were born in other countries.
Corporate chef Bill Fuller of Big Burrito and Brian Pekarcik, executive chef and partner of S+P Restaurant Group, have both experienced the shortages, especially for back-of-the house staff. But it hits the independents even harder.
David Murphy, a chef who arrived from Uchi in Austin, Texas, said he has had trouble finding cooks for Carmella’s Plates & Pints on the South Side. The spot owned by Carmella Salem has just finished building a kitchen and will start dinner service in the middle of November.
“There isn’t a wealth of experienced cooks here. I’m even having trouble finding a dishwasher,” he said. “I’m from Texas and we have a ton of immigrant workers. It’s a part of my culture and I go out of my way to hire immigrants. I just can’t find them here.”
And in Bloomfield at Fukuda, the sushi restaurant and izakaya that closed last month, owner Hoon Kim could not find a highly skilled sushi chef here so he recruited one from San Diego with experience in Japanese sushi kitchens. When that chef announced he was leaving nearly a year after he started, Kim decided to close the restaurant, in part because of the challenge of finding a chef with such skills.
With national legislation on immigrants stalled, it’s up to individual cities to encourage the growth of an immigrant population in relation to the restaurant community. But it’s not easy.
“How can we help all types of immigrants find their footing in our cities?” asked Richard T. Herman, an immigration lawyer based in Cleveland. He’s the author with Robert L. Smith of “Immigrant, Inc: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs are Driving the New Economy.”
“There is economic juice in a rich mix of immigrants, from a variety of cultures, and a variety of educational and industry backgrounds,” he wrote in an email. “Often, they are inter-connected and interdependent. For example, high-skill immigrants want to live in a place that offers authentic native-food restaurants, their ethnic grocery stores, their churches/temples/mosques, etc.
“Merchant and blue-collar immigrants can help cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Detroit grow the population and provide a new wave of homeowners and consumers to help revitalize older, distressed neighborhoods, replenish outmigration and tax base and preserve manufacturing jobs.”
He cited Pittsburgh as being “out front,” in terms of encouraging immigrants to move to Pittsburgh. In May, Mayor Bill Peduto launched the Welcoming Pittsburgh initiative, in which he acknowledged that, for the city to thrive, it must be attractive to a new generation of immigrants. Peduto’s goal is to bring 20,000 new immigrants to the city in 10 years.
Herman also noted that the administration can acknowledge the presence of undocumented workers by encouraging a city ID program, which allows these individuals to have access to libraries, schools and other core services. Among examples are the combination photo identification and debit cards in Oakland, Calif., the New Haven Resident Card in Connecticut and New York City’s municipal ID card that comes with discounts or free tickets to cultural institutions.
“Historically, immigrants have gravitated toward restaurants,” Herman said, citing his in-laws from Thailand who opened a restaurant in the U.S. when they arrived here. He used the example to encourage immigrants attending local universities to consider another avenue: to start their own restaurants through the E2 Treaty Investor visa, which allows foreign nationals from treaty countries such as Turkey, Japan and Mexico, to invest here and to stay in the U.S.
That’s what 48-year-old Sihyuk Choi did in 2005 when he opened Oishii Bento, a pan-Asian takeout place in Oakland, followed by Chick’n Bubbly, a Korean fried chicken place he opened next door in August.
Originally from Seoul, South Korea, he remains a foreign national. Choi said he came to the U.S. in 2000 for graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh with the intention of going into construction and engineering, but he did not have the resources to get started.
“So I took the advice of friends and started a restaurant,” he said. Choi caters to a clientele connected to the universities, including the growing number of Asians.
American citizens who own restaurants and even those with green cards have to secure workers through other means. Some restaurateurs hire undocumented workers, of course, while other companies get creative.
For restaurant positions such as a sous chef or a management position that would require college degrees, attorney Joel Pfeffer, a partner at Meyer, Unkovic & Scott, suggests the H-1B visa, which allows U.S. employers to hire foreign works with specialized skills or in specialty occupations. A really ambitious restaurant can find someone who would qualify for an O-1 visa, which would be a chef with a world-class reputation. O-1 visas allow companies to hire “outstanding workers” in the sciences, arts, athletics, education or business.
Rivers Casinos on the North Shore has gone through elaborate measures to employ refugees who arrive in the U.S. as documented immigrants. The casino has partnered with Catholic Charities, AJAPO (Acculturation for Justice, Access and Peace Outreach), Jewish Family and Children’s Services and Northern Area Multi-Service Center along with the Pennsylvania Refugee Resettlement Program to help refugees find service-industry jobs. Since August, the casino has hired more than 200 foreign workers of its total 1,800-member staff to work in the casino, the dining room and in maintenance.
Elizabeth Ringler-Jayanthan, program coordinator for Northern Area Multi-Service Center, said she places some of the 500 refugees coming to Pittsburgh per year in jobs at Rivers Casino. “Our clients really enjoy it,” she said. Her organization also places refugees in jobs at Texas de Brazil in Station Square and at Little Bangkok in the Strip District.
Rivers Casino started recruitment efforts five years ago, said Andre Barnabei, vice president of human resources. When newly arrived refugees are hired, he often loops in an interpreter. “It’s something that may take a bit longer, but it’s certainly one of the things we do on a regular basis.” He said he has watched many of his Bhutanese and Nepalese hires rise into management. “They along with the rest of our group of native Pittsburghers are exceptional workers,” he said.
Nicola DiCio, owner of Casa Reyna and Reyna Foods in the Strip District and a tortilla factory along the banks of the Allegheny River, said he employs between 20 to 25 Latinos among his businesses. “I try to keep a mix between Latino employees and locals,” he said. “I want to see people working together. And so far, it’s been working out well.”
Most of his non-native employees came to Pittsburgh from Texas or California and already had work papers. Others are married to Americans.
DiCio’s mother Lydia, who died 13 years ago, was from Reynosa, Mexico, and his father is from Italy. “The city’s Latino population is definitely increasing,” he said. “There are a lot more people here than there were 10 years ago.”
For restaurateurs who want to hire more immigrants, he suggests advertising in La Jornada Latina, a Spanish-language publication. But he emphasizes hiring legal workers, both for employers and employees. “It’s not a good idea to be here illegally because if you are and you want to stay you’re eventually going to hit a wall.”
Mike Chen of Everyday Noodles in Squirrel Hill sets up jobs for temporary workers from Taiwan, rather than to try to bring cooks here permanently. Still, it has been a Herculean feat, taking him three years of negotiations to set up an exchange with a private company in Taiwan and the Taiwanese government. The exchange allows him to bring cooks to Pittsburgh to make soup dumplings and to teach his cooks traditional noodle-pulling techniques.
Since the restaurant opened in 2013, he’s had four cooks come for three or six months. “We try to extend their visas but it doesn’t always work.” Right now, he has two workers from Taiwan and will continue the exchanges indefinitely.
Rather than hiring immigrants stateside to obtain legal immigrant workers, “it’s easier to work with the government over there,” in workers’ country of origin, he said.
“This has been super challenging,” he said, “because the whole immigration system here is very tough.”
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Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, https://www.post-gazette.com
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