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For enterprising young business people, the competitive pace and relative freedom from governmental and union restrictions are a major lure. Daniele Bodini, 32, the fast-moving, fast-thinking son of a Milanese stockbroker, has ascended in five years from a trainee at the elite investment firm of Blyth Eastman Dillon to owner of a multimillion-dollar real estate investment company. Says he: "I believe in meritocracy. Any place where you can be fired in 20 minutes is a great place." Adds Swiss-born Pierre Honegger, 34, a former journalist who three years ago bought a foreign-car dealership in Princeton, N.J., and has tripled its sales: "If you work hard and have a good idea, you have a much bigger reward than in Europe, where everything is superorganized, and traditional business has cornered all the markets."
Apart from the New York metropolitan area, the most attractive areas for entrepreneurial immigrants are southern Florida and Southern California. In the city of Hollywood, north of Miami, two of every three real estate transactions in recent months have been made by French Canadians. Fearful of the economic chaos that could result from the possible secession of Quebec from the Canadian Confederation, some 10,000 Canadians (Anglos as well as French) have settled in southern Florida. The Miami area has also attracted a stream of Jamaicans who find life under Prime Minister Michael Manley's "democratic socialism" increasingly oppressive.
The influx of well-to-do foreigners to California in the past two years or so has resulted in the biggest real estate boom in Los Angeles since the invention of the cinematograph. An estimated 20% of all property in the chic Beverly Hills-Brentwood-Bel Air area is now foreign owned. Iranians have nicknamed Loma Vista Drive "Aga Sheik Hadi Avenue," after the street where many lived in Tehran. Says Elaine Young, a Beverly Hills real estate broker who has sold palatial properties to foreigners from many countries: "Southern California has become the world's rich melting pot."
The newcomers often lead low-key lives for fear of kidnapings and potential retaliation against their families back home. The Iranians, for example, are seldom to be seen in fashionable bistros or stores. (One high-living exception is Henry Hakim, 24, who claims to own one of Southern California's biggest trading companies; he says that he ships back home to Iran 85% of all sunglasses sold in that country-where everyone, it seems, wears sunglasses.) Nonetheless, the new immigrants show a certain style wherever they settle. The Europeans, in particular, tend to have a sleek insouciance that immediately sets them apart on an avenue or in a living room. Their businesses, from boutiques to watering places, are conducted with Continental cachet. While the new Americans often get together for social occasions that may include an afternoon of soccer, an evening of disco dancing or a meal at one of their favored restaurants (La Boite in Manhattan, for example, or Wong Kai in Miami or Ma Maison in Los Angeles), they tend to assimilate easily into American life. Indeed, many Europeans enjoy the openness of their new neighbors, after the clannishness that marks the social life of the old countries.