- We wanted to have a restaurant
that screamed immigrant pride, right from the name.
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- I just fall in love with the idea
because
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- I think that we oughta be clearly taking a stand
and embedding the notion
of what we stand for right in the business.
That's why we're called Immigrant Food
and not something else.
We decided not to do it in a way
which a lot of businesses do and I completely respect,
which is take part of your profits
and then contribute a portion of that to a cause.
We decided to embed the cause
right in what the business stands for.
Without the cause, there is no business.
If there wouldn't be the cause of immigrants,
this place wouldn't exist.
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- It's like 20 restaurants in one menu.
The challenge to create a menu
that is like combining 20 different restaurants
in just one place at the beginning was like,
this is gonna be so difficult to create
something that connects everything
and try to show people different cultures through the food.
So I start, like, doing research about all the immigrations,
the compounds, the heritage of America.
I start with a super massive piece of paper,
write it down,
all the immigrations by countries by percentage.
And then, like, different ingredients from every single country
and try to connect those.
- Both of my parents were immigrants.
You know,
give me your huddled masses.
I mean, you know, this country was never created to bring in rich people.
It was created to bring in people
who were being persecuted, either
because they don't have the economics means
or because they're being persecuted
for religious beliefs or political beliefs.
That was where my mom was.
She was being persecuted for her religious beliefs,
and it just felt to me like I needed
to do more to celebrate her memory.
I've been involved in restaurants for a long time,
and I've been involved in politics
and communications for a long time.
And I felt like,
why don't we marry those two things together?
We wanted to create a restaurant
that celebrated America's story.
But we also wanted to make sure
that the restaurant actually did something
for immigrants today, as well.
And so we've partnered with five NGOs,
and they're in the trenches every day helping immigrants.
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CAIR Coalition is a very particular NGO
because they only work with immigrants
that are in the detention system.
What CAIR Coalition is doing today
is really God's work.
- People who enter immigration detention
don't actually have a right to representation,
to free representation, like citizens do.
So that means that they're expected
to represent themselves in immigration court,
despite most likely not knowing anything
about how our justice system works.
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- I think we've become
such a polarized society in many respects.
There are people who wanna counteract
some of the things that we've fought for
for many years in this country,
and I just think that it's the role
of business to get involved in that fight.
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