Immigration to the U.S. is often framed as a problem to be managed, controlled or punished. Immigrants are often derided for crossing the border without authorization or “taking jobs” from U.S. citizens.
This rhetoric has intensified when Donald Trump has been in the White House. Trump and officials in his administrations have repeatedly characterized immigrants as a drain on national resources.
But research on immigrants tells a different story.
I’m a historian of business and culture who examines how enterprises shape and are shaped by the societies and historical contexts in which they operate. Since 2021 I have led the Gainesville Business History Project, a research initiative at the University of Florida that studies the long-term patterns of the town’s business history.
Nearby history
Our project takes a nearby history approach that recognizes that businesses around us, even small ones, are part of the historical record that we consumers also actively shape. Our team of 10 researchers has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 40 business owners and entrepreneurs in Florida.
About 22% to 23% of the state’s residents – roughly 5 million people – are foreign born. This is much higher than the nationwide average of 14%.
In 2023, foreign-born Florida residents made up almost 50% of the workforce employed in pillars of the state’s economy, including agriculture, tourism and construction.
In 2025, one study found that 267,700 of these Florida immigrants – about 5% – were entrepreneurs.
Our interviews uncovered many stories that show how immigrant-founded businesses can grow into familiar institutions that define a place’s identity. These stories illustrate some of the ways immigrants contribute to their communities.
La Aurora Latin Market
The story of La Aurora, a Latin grocery store that has operated for nearly 25 years in Gainesville, demonstrates how businesses are culturally embedded within the community and how immigrant-owned businesses often are tied to long-term local networks.
Aurora Ynigo crossed the Mexico-U.S. border in the early 1990s. She went straight to Miami, where she met her husband, Peter. In the late 1990s they moved from Miami to Gainesville for Peter’s job. At the time there was limited access to Hispanic products in the university town with about 180,000 residents. So in 1999 the family decided to open a Latin store that Aurora would manage.
For years the couple and their parents would create a weekly shopping list, which included many items requested by clients and friends who had immigrated to Gainesville from Peru, Cuba or Colombia. Then they would drive 400 miles to Miami, where they would look for the items all over the city, especially in supermarkets there such as Sedano’s and Presidente. They would then drive back to Gainesville with fresh food in big coolers to fill the racks at their location on University Avenue.
After 27 years in business, La Aurora Latin Market on University Avenue has its own butcher counter, fresh produce and other items from across Latin America and the Caribbean. It also makes fresh-baked Latin American breads, pastries and cakes. And it has become a place where the Spanish-speaking community – a demographic that has grown considerably in the past 10 years – can reliably find familiar products.
Mary’s Cafe & Coin Laundry
For more than four decades, Mary’s Café and Laundry has operated along Miami’s now-central and busy 27th Avenue.
The business has remained in the same family across three generations. It traces back to Eumelia Morales Fernández, who immigrated to Miami from the town of Santa Clara, Cuba, in 1970. Like many immigrant women, she first worked as a seamstress. She then got a job in a shoe factory before buying a small supermarket with her husband on 32nd Avenue in Miami in 1988.
After purchasing the building where the cafe and laundromat still stand, they installed washing machines and dryers and opened a small cafeteria alongside the laundromat. They named the business Mary’s Cafe, after Eumelia’s daughter, who later ran the business before passing it on to her own daughter, Vicky, who currently manages it.
Photo by the author, taken in 2025, CC BY-NC-ND
Mary created the menu, which has changed little since the cafe first opened. The cafe has its own kitchen for tostadas and pastelitos, serving coladas and cortaditos daily at this central Miami location. Everything continues to be made in-house.
The building also houses another small retail space, which is currently a watch repair business run by another member of the family. Before that, the space was home to a Chinese takeout owned by another Cuban family.
I was able to interview both Eumelia and Vicky. Vicky told me she has not changed much in the way she coordinates work and supplies at Mary’s. The biggest change she’s had to make is learning to use social media to promote the business.
16th Avenue Diner
Gilberto Argoytia Miranda owns the 16th Avenue Diner. The diner is an icon of Gainesville’s southern cuisine and has been in operation for more than 50 years.
Argoytia Miranda is the diner’s eighth owner – he purchased it in 2021. He had experience in the sector from when he lived in Mexico City, where he had operated food trucks since 2010.
He knew he wanted to be in the restaurant industry, but he didn’t immediately open a Mexican restaurant, despite the limited number of them in Gainesville. Instead, he studied the local market by working for various restaurants, including delivering food via DoorDash. This experience allowed him and his family to gain a deeper understanding of the Gainesville food scene.
The diner had to maintain its soul, as Argoytia Miranda calls it, for the regular clientele to keep coming. He and his family didn’t want to replace an eatery that carried local meaning and tradition. In fact, he recognizes this continuity as an asset, because the place remains recognizable.
Photo by the author, taken in November 2025, CC BY-NC-ND
Argoytia Miranda rarely changes the menu, because he understands that’s what people have liked for years. He does not see the need to reinvent the core of the restaurant, its Southern-style cooking and the Americana atmosphere.
Little by little, he told me in 2025, he intends to experiment with adding more Latino flavor to the menu. But new dishes will become part of the official offering only if customers enjoy them.
