The quiet west Boston suburb of Allston could hardly be more different to Mônica Chianelli's native city of Rio de Janeiro. But it is the unlikely setting for Vida Verde, her house cleaning co-operative that is one of a growing number of successful Brazilian businesses in the US.
Ms Chianelli had a small farm and a home-made pasta company in Brazil before giving up and leaving for the US. Despite the political furore surrounding immigration to the US, she and thousands of other Brazilians are finding the country more
fertile terrain than home.
Massachusetts, which has strong historical links with Portuguese-speaking migrants from the Azores and Cape Verde, has been a magnet for Brazilian migrants since the 1980s. However, while earlier generations of Portuguese speakers worked in the
whaling and textile industries, the newcomers have shown more
entrepreneurial spark.
At home, complicated bureaucratic barriers and some of the most punishing tax rules in the world make life difficult for would-be entrepreneurs. According to the International Finance Corporation, start-ups in Brazil need to fill in 18 separate forms, in
procedures that typically take 152 days. By contrast, in the US, a start-up involves only six procedures and takes six days.
Álvaro Lima, a Brazilian
adviser to Thomas Menino, Boston's mayor, says that Massachusetts' Brazilian population of 80,000-85,000 has formed more than 1,000 businesses, a rate, he says, that is three times higher than that of the native US population. "In Brazil you need to be upper middle class to find the $25,000-$30,000 funds necessary to open a franchise. Here, that amount is in reach of many more people," he says.
Brazilians have
carved out a powerful niche in specialised domestic services such as cleaning, painting and gardening, where they can earn up to $100 an hour - equal to about half the monthly minimum wage back home.
Brazilian cleaners typically organise their weekly schedule of contracts into portfolios, or listas , which acquire value and are bought and sold. Ms Chianelli paid $2,000 to buy a schedule to clean three houses. She and the other founders of Vida Verde have introduced their own home-made cleaning materials, after finding that prolonged exposure to the
chlorine or
ammonia contained in
abrasive cleaners caused
skin irritation and
nausea.
The products, based on a range of materials using organic products such as vinegar,
borax,
tea-tree oil and
bicarbonate of soda, are not only easier on the co-operative's workers but also make for an environmentally sensitive service that is becoming popular with the city's liberal professional class.
Much of this would not work in Brazil, where domestic cleaning and painting are low-status occupations that pay badly. Lower-middle-class Brazilians take a different view in the US because the rewards are so much greater. Indeed, those Boston Brazilians who have returned home have not had much luck in replicating the success they had in the US.
Sueli Siqueira, a sociologist who has studied the experiences of migrants returning to the town of Governador Valladares, a central Brazilian city whose residents have longstanding links with Boston, found that about half of the new ventures established - dry cleaning or video hire were particular favourites - quickly collapsed, leaving some migrants to repeat their journey to the US.
While many US policymakers have focused on channelling migrants'
remittances to help develop businesses at home, Mr Lima believes the money would be better spent by allowing Brazilians to integrate more successfully into the US.
To that end, he is working with the mayor's office, local philanthropists and US and Brazilian banks to develop a fund that would pay for English classes or other training for the Brazilian community. However, with popular unease growing about illegal immigrants that looks ambitious, especially as many Brazilians - like other migrants - lack proper documents.
At present, increased surveillance and more frequent raids by migration officials mean many of Boston's Brazilians are running scared and bringing forward plans to go back home. Mr Lima, however, is more optimistic. "You can make a noise but the economy is so dependent on immigrant labour that they are here to stay."
13°C
9°C
20
%
12°C
80
%
10°C
60
%
70
%
