Transcription of Tae Chong for the show Coastal Enterprises Inc. #206
Dr. Belisle: There are many guests whose names precede them, whose reputations are out there and then when we finally get them on the show, it’s kind of fun to meet them. Today, I have one these guests, this is Tae Chong who works in business development services at Coastal Enterprises Inc. Tae provides counseling through CEI’s StartSmart program helping refugees and immigrants to start, strengthen, or expand their own small businesses. Tae has lived in Portland for 36 years where he’s been actively involved in local and state issues regarding immigrants and refugees. It’s great to have a chance to meet you.
Tae Chong: Thank you, thank you for having me on the show.
Dr. Belisle: I’m very interested in your background because you came to Maine from South Korea Halloween of 1976.
Tae Chong: That’s right.
Dr. Belisle: There weren’t that many people from, or maybe there were no people from South Korea that were moving to Maine in 1976.
Tae Chong: Probably true, yeah.
Dr. Belisle: How did that happen?
Tae Chong: My uncle and my father, they were orphans after the Korean war and there was an American G.I. George Wyntle who actually grew up in Windham I believe and befriended my uncle while he was in Korea. When my uncle was a teenager, George wrote a letter to my uncle saying “Why don’t you come to Maine? It’s a great place to live.”
George sponsored my uncle to come here and he ended up in south Portland. He had that American story where he came with just like $10 in his pocket, a couple of suitcases and ended up being a janitor at the local church and also at Fairchild and he ended up working his way to being a general manager at Fairchild and ended up being Vice President AMD. Obviously, he said life is good here, there’s opportunities.
In ’76, Korea was economically, was in terrible times, and so, my father said “All right. What’s important is not my life but my children’s life.” And so, he wanted to emigrate to the United States and give his kids the education that he thought that the country could provide. We ended up in south Portland for a day on Halloween which was culturally amazing because there’s no Halloween celebration where I grew up.
I just remember vividly like me and cousins for the first time, we didn’t speak Korean and I have two older brothers and the three us were sitting in the living room just kind of looking at each other wondering what we’re supposed to be doing when my parents, my uncle and aunt went looking for an apartment and all these kids would knock on the door with costumes and they would say something in gibberish because we couldn’t speak English.
They’d take my oldest brother not knowing the culture or the custom, would grab handfuls of candy and give it to these kids and there was like this universal ah-hah in the neighborhood and all the kids just swarmed to our house and they took all the candy and just like we learned a new ritual which is like once all the candies out, we turned off the lights and just hide and pray that the kids don’t knock on the door.
That was the introduction to America for us and so, yeah, I’m still learning even though I’ve been here for 30 years, I mean almost 40 years but that’s how America was introduced to me was through Halloween and as a kid, all the candy being gone and not having any for me.
Dr. Belisle: Especially that part where you had to turn the light off and hide, I can only imagine, as a small child, being …
Tae Chong: Exactly. Yeah. I was a small child.
Dr. Belisle: “Why is this that people do this in this country?”
Tae Chong: Right.
Dr. Belisle: Yeah, that’s interesting. You reminded me of the story that I sometimes tell. I came to live in Maine in Yarmouth during the clam festival. I was pretty young and I remember going by the ferris wheel thinking “Wow, what a great place. Yarmouth has a ferris wheel.”
Tae Chong: Right. “It’s great. It’s here all the time.”
Dr. Belisle: Exactly. It’s the same sort of strange introduction to your new home. And then you moved to Portland. You actually grew up in Portland.
Tae Chong: Correct. Yeah. I’ve been here almost my entire life. I grew up on Brackett Street in the west end and just being a young person, I lived in almost every district in Portland but now, my home is in Winding Way of Capisic Street in Portland and so, it’s a great, great neighborhood and I just love how Portland has transformed.
Being the only kid of color, now, 42% of the schools’ population are multi-cultural and 40% of all the kids under the age of 5 in Portland are multi-cultural kids. I used to joke, there were only four kids of color in the Portland school system and two of them were my brothers and I was the other one and there was a Vietnamese kid who, and this is a true story, who ended up being my police officer when I worked for the police department.
That’s all I saw, were those three other kids of color including myself. It wasn’t until mid the ‘80s when you saw the Vietnamese and Cambodian kids come to Portland and I could see Portland starting to transform. I never would have imagined what it is today and thankfully, it is reflective of what the nation is. We might think Portland is an anomaly, but if you go to any major city in the United States, it’s actually more diverse and if you look at where the country is headed, it’s going to be like this for the foreseeable future if not, more diverse. I think it was fortuitous that I was here to see that change.
Dr. Belisle: You were telling me before we got on the air about going to the Riley School and having people follow you because they were so interested in the fact that you didn’t look like everybody else and waiting outside your door to see you come out and you described walking down or going down Congress Street and having cars actually stopped to look at your family.
Tae Chong: Correct. Right.
Dr. Belisle: That must, it seemed kind of weird given that you came from a place where that didn’t happen at all.
Tae Chong: Absolutely, yeah. It’s both scary but also fascinating. My wife had a similar experience. My wife is from New Jersey, she’s Irish Ukrainian and she has blonde hair, so when we went to Korea, it was the opposite. She’s stuck out and all the, whenever we went to a park and all these school kids saw her, they would ran to her like she was a rock star and they want to ask her all kinds of questions. That was sort of like what I experienced growing up but I couldn’t communicate and I wasn’t in charge because I was only seven so that’s where it was a little scary.
It was also fascinating in just, being the only one that stands out, you end up being the observer. You’re always looking for clues and cues. That’s what we do when we go abroad, we’re always looking to see what’s the social norm, how are people reacting, interacting. That’s how I grew up and I still have that where I’m always trying to observe what’s the norm. Even though I’ve been here for almost 40 years, that’s the kind of education you get as a person of color, in a place that’s not very diverse, you’re always, not necessarily fitting in, but just trying to understand your surroundings. That’s where it was fascinating.
Dr. Belisle: It’s interesting that you’re able to take that view of it and you’ve been able to parlay it into something that has become your life’s work rather than feeling so threatened by it, that it made you angry or frustrated or cynical or bitter. Somehow, you’ve taken all of these experience when you were younger and as you were growing up and you’ve worked with it in a really interesting way.
Tae Chong: Well, I’ve had my angry moments and cynical moments. I think everyone goes through that. As you get older, you realized we’re all connected and it doesn’t really matter, it’s just how you educate and how you present yourself, the energy that you give out and how it’s received is really important. Being here, when you’re here long enough, before we got on the show, we realized there’s already a connection. That’s the beauty of Maine. Portland is small enough, Maine is small enough that even if I’m a person of color, I can find a way to connect with you, with a friend or an event or something, and that’s what makes Maine special.
You realize that as you build relationships with people and you build relationships with the place and you try to cultivate it, you want to be part of it, you want to add to it and make it better and that becomes everyone’s life work. I think whether you are a business person or a clergy or whoever, you want to make the place where you are better and if you can do it a way you’re of service rather than trying to conquer it, you realize that doing things through service has a lasting impact.
Whereas if you’re trying to conquer something, it’s all about being angry and going for the win. It’s short-lived. I learned that after 20 years of advocacy and community work. Now, I’m in that stage where I’m trying to be of service and hopefully, that will be my reputation.
Dr. Belisle: Yes, we were talking about you’re having graduated from Deering High School a few years ahead of me and how both Yarmouth and Deering High School, we were the one at play festival and there’s that drama interaction. One of the things I find really interesting about that is that Yarmouth, if you had three people of color or four people of color living in the City of Portland when you were growing up, it had zero. Or maybe one.
Tae Chong: Right.
Dr. Belisle: Even by Yarmouth coming into the “Big City” we were actually experiencing some diversification, but we didn’t even think it that way, it was like “All right, we are the one at place,” we’re all going to be doing this thing that makes us kind of happy because it’s about drama and it’s about getting to know people. It really seems like that’s kind of the ongoing story of Maine.
Tae Chong: True.
Dr. Belisle: Is people on the same place at the same time realizing there’s a lot of commonality.
Tae Chong: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s the touchstones and sometimes, it takes work to find what the touchstone, where the touchstones are. Immigrants and refugees, they want a safe place to live. They want to raise their kids where education is valued and communities valued. But sometimes, we just can’t get over the appearances. It takes work to find the touchstones.
We did that with other communities, whether it was the French Canadians that had to integrate, they love God and Christianity as much as the Protestants, it was just a different touchstone. That fear, it took a long time for that fear to kind of absolve and it was through relationships and education, and I think that’s where we are with the immigrant and refugee populations and multi-cultural populations.
Yeah, we’re all human and we all want what’s best for our family and for our community and everyone wants to be included and everyone’s wants to feel like they’re part of a greater fabric and I think Maine gives people the opportunity to do that because it’s so easy to build relationships, it’s small enough and I think Mainers are open enough to do those things.
Dr. Belisle: I would agree and I also think it’s great that CEI is doing the StartSmart program where you’re actually helping people to do something that enables them to have a sustainable financially-viable life within the state.
Tae Chong: Absolutely.
Dr. Belisle: Tell me about that program.
Tae Chong: Sure. It’s a program that’s been around for about 20 years, it’s about 17 years old and we’ve helped about 13 immigrants and refugees through business counseling. We’ve started over 300 businesses in the state of Maine. It’s not just Portland or Lewiston, but it’s throughout southern Maine and some parts of northern Maine. If you look at any Maine streets in Portland and Lewiston and now in Biddeford, you see ethnic restaurants and stores that where CEI has had a part in helping those businesses. In fact, almost all the businesses in the Lisbon Street that’s kind of the gateway of Lewiston, that’s where CEI has helped so many stores and restaurants.
The same is true for Portland’s whether it’s Congress Street or Washington Avenue or Forest Avenue or Brighton Avenue, all those ethnics stores and restaurants, we’ve had a part in helping to create those businesses. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, in 2010, they did a study on the impact of multicultural businesses in the state of Maine, they contribute $400 million to state’s economy. It’s not a small number, it’s a significant number and it’s a growing number.
In fact, the multicultural contributions to the nation’s economy, so if throw in, you added up all the GDP of the Latino, Asian, and African American, native American population in the United States, it would be the sixth largest economy in the world, it’s over $4 trillion and that’s because they are third of the US population. By 2044, it’s going to be almost 50% of our nation’s economy, I mean our nation’s population and that’s not that far away. In fact, by 2030, it’s going to be almost 40% of the US population.
It’s the up growth, I mean that’s where the young people are, that’s where a lot of the energy is in addition to what everyone’s already doing. We have to include that as part of our strategic plan as the nation evolves. That’s what I’m trying to do in Portland. I want to carry that message. Just because we’re in Maine, we can’t forget what the rest of the nation is doing.
A great example is Massachusetts where in 1990, there were half a million immigrants and refugee. Today, there’s over a million and so, you can see how it’s transforming Boston and greater Boston and I think that demographic change is going to make its way to Portland.
You can already see it in southern New Hampshire. If Maine just doesn’t jump on that, it’s like missing the French Canadian back in the, at the turn of the century. We wouldn’t have the mills, we wouldn’t have the businesses that we have today. We need to see that as an opportunity and try to reach out to those communities and make it welcoming. Portland has done a great job and so as Lewiston and other cities, but as a state, we need to do that because as you know, we’re the oldest in the nation.
I used to joke that I always on the other side but now, I actually jumped over to the older side. The median ages is 43.9 and when I testified before the state legislature on behalf of the new American Resource Center, it was 42.7. That’s pretty scary when we’re aging that quickly and we don’t have people to fill in. The boomers are retiring, filling those skilled jobs and we simply don’t have enough kids in the state of Maine to fill those skilled jobs. We have more deaths than we have births in the state of Maine, so mathematically, it doesn’t work. We’ve got to figure out how to be more welcoming and inclusive if we want to keep Maine the way it is because Maine is going to change if you don’t have people.
Really, the concept of Maine isn’t sense of place, it’s the people who make the sense of place and it doesn’t matter if that person happens to be brown or black or yellow because when they come here, they value what all Mainers value which is we want to create a safe environment, we want to respect nature, we want to respect the place that we’re in. Those are Maine values that every immigrant has adopted, whether you are French Canadian, or Irish or German because they’re always the other at one point but now, they are the keeper of those values. I think immigrants and refugees will do the same just like all the other immigrants before them.
Dr. Belisle: What are some of the issues that you see as you’re counseling some of these business owners and trying to just help them understand how to better work within the city of Portland or the state of Maine?
Tae Chong: Well, it’s just familiarity with the US business culture and how you set up shop in the Middle East is different from how you set up shop in United States, so there’s a lot of technical assistance that needs to happen. It would be wonderful to have more business advisors to kind of do that work. It’s also access to capital. When you’re an immigrant or a legal resident, you may not have the capital because you don’t have the credit history.
Not having credit history makes it difficult for someone to get a commercial loan. They come to CEI, we’re a non-profit financing organization so we have products that we could offer, but it would be wonderful if people could get credit so they can get other or be able to get other products on the commercial market.
The other barrier is that we have a large Muslim population, it’s the fastest growing population in the state of Maine. It’s the fastest growing religion in the United States. They adhere to the sharia law which basically means you can’t take or accept interest. It’s fee-based which is really … it’s very similar to an interest but it’s the law. Right now, in the commercial banks, there is nothing for that particular product.
To me, it’s a missed opportunity for commercial lenders because if you have 15,000 customers which would be larger than the city of Yarmouth and there’s several banks in Yarmouth as there are several banks in Falmouth, just imagine having 15,000 customers who are loyal that wants to do business with you, if you create a new product for them, someone could be very rich doing that.
I hope that that message gets across that we need to work with this particular population because they’re some of the most entrepreneurial people I’ve ever met and because they’re not investing in stocks, some of them or interest-bearing products, they’re investing in businesses.
What I see are young people who are culturated and they have a bachelor’s degree or a PhD but they’ll start a business on top of their professional job and so, that’s the kind of stuff that I think commercial lenders are missing out if we could create something like that, that would be wonderful. Those are basically the two biggest barriers, it’s really financing and technical assistance.
Dr. Belisle: I’ve been thinking about my sister-in-law who is from Tunisia, she met my brother in France and she was trained as neurosurgeon, they have a different educational system there, but in order to come to the United States to practice medicine, she actually had to go back … First of all, she had to learn English much better than she had known it. Then she had to pass all the exams just to be considered a doctor even though she already had been a practicing surgeon. Then she had to make the decision as to whether she was willing to back through a neurosurgery residency.
All of the things that she had done up until that point were only somewhat relevant. She has to almost start … It wasn’t completely from the beginning but it was pretty close and yet, she did it. Now, she a neurology resident, she’s going through her training all over again, she’s learned English very well but just the amount of effort that she has put in to doing this is just staggering to me.
Tae Chong: You’re right. The New American Resource Center at Portland Adult, that is the vehicle to try to overcome some of those things but it’s staffed by one person. There’s over 210 professionals who have professional degrees that are working with Sally Sutton who runs the New American Resource Center and she’s the only person that’s looking at certification but also trying to assess people where they are and also trying to find jobs.
There’s 1,700 people taking classes at Portland Adult, there’s 4,000 people … in the SL program, there’s 4,000 people taking classes at Portland Adult. It would be wonderful if it was readily staffed so that we can help people.The state has been wonderful in granting a two-year program at New American Resource Center but it’s for one person. I think what’s needed is obviously more money and more people and more resources so that they can help your sister-in-law with the accreditation process but it would be wonderful if the city and the state could see that as an important vehicle too as part of economic development.
It’s like anything, there’s always competing measures but to me, if you have somebody that is close to working professionally because they already have the degree, it’s a really smart investment as opposed to waiting for a Maine kid to go through 12 years of education, hopefully four years of college and hopefully they’ll stay in Maine. That’s 16 years, that’s absolutely necessary and critical, but if you already have someone who has work experience, who has the college degree and all they need is maybe some English classes or maybe they need a navigator to go through the accreditation process so that they can be accredited or at least have most of their work history be accepted.
That to me is a smart investment, but the state is investing a little bit but it would be wonderful if that could be bigger. Even then, it is an arduous process. There’s no guarantee that’s going to be quicker, but if you have more help, perhaps it could be shorter and perhaps we could make a deeper impact. To me, it’s the biggest issue in the state of Maine. I was alarmed at how quickly we’re aging and how quickly boomers are retiring.
John Dorrer is a Research Fellow for Georgetown, used to be the Head of the Labor Statistics for DOL for the state of Maine. Basically, CEI did a presentation to [inaudible 00:53:41] and businesses at the Chamber, we worked in partnership John T. Gorman’s Foundations, PWI, Portland Workforce Initiate, greater Portland. The Mayor was involved, Mayor Brennan, Chris Hall was also involved, and obviously, CEI and we’re funded by Lerner Foundation. What he said was it’s not necessarily the number of people who are retiring, it’s the number of high-skilled employees that’s retiring that’s alarming.
We know that a company like [Whacks 00:54:17] if they don’t have high skilled software developers and they lost say half of that population, it has a dramatic impact on their business, the same is also true for IDEX or any other high tech businesses that we have whether it’s biotech or semiconductor or computer software, all those great companies that are kind of revitalizing, driving Portland’s economy along with the banking and healthcare. When all those skilled workers are leaving and there’s no one behind them to fill those positions, what happens to Portland’s economy? If Portland falters which is half of that state’s economy, what kind of impact does that have on the state of Maine.
Most people forget that even though Portland’s only 66,000 people, every day, there’s like 40,000 people that come to work in Portland and 15,000 people leave Portland to go work somewhere else. That’s a significant number of people that are contributing to the entire state’s economy and sometimes, it’s those small dominos that have a rippling effect and that’s why I believe what I’m doing and what CEI is doing and all those collaborators are doing is kind of, not necessarily sounding alarmed but educating and trying to be proactive before it actually happens.
Dr. Belisle: Tae, I’m sure people are going to want to learn more about this because there had been so many interesting things that you’ve brought up. I can imagine those who are listening are going to be left completely satisfied. How do people find out more about CEI and the StartSmart program and the work that you’re doing?
Tae Chong: We’re on our, the website at www.ceimaine.org or they can always call StartSmart and 7751984 and they can always email me or John Scribner at CEI and we’d be happy to talk with anyone and thank so much for this opportunity.
Dr. Belisle: We’ve been speaking with Tae Chong who works at business development services at Coastal Enterprises Inc. Thanks for coming in.
Tae Chong: Thank you.