Szymanski, Martinez: Big Government is Bad for Hispanic Small Business Owners

By Aniela Szymanski and Martin Martinez

Hispanic small business owners are a major part of the economy, but big government policies prevent them from reaching greater success.

This past month was Hispanic Heritage month and there was a lot to celebrate. Nearly one third of the one million minority-owned U.S. businesses are Hispanic-owned employing over 1.2 million workers. Hispanics are the fastest growing business owners in the nation – realizing the American dream and a way to prosperity.

Hispanic-owned business also, however, tend to be small and rely on family members to help them operate, which is where big government starts to be their biggest enemy. State government policies disproportionately impact small businesses, stifling their operations, bleeding them of capital and punishing them for allowing family members to help them succeed.

One Las Vegas, Nevada, Hispanic small business owner is experiencing this first hand. Alejandro Uribe opened an auto repair shop five years ago. Mr. Uribe immigrated legally from Mexico in the 1990s and spent years attending community college completing every available auto repair course. He, like many other Hispanic small business owners, relied on his family’s support to help him start out.

As Mr. Uribe was busy building his American dream, government regulations came crashing down. A drunk vagrant complained to state regulators that he was injured at Mr. Uribe’s shop, seeking tens of thousands of dollars. The state immediately mercilessly pursued Mr. Uribe for a flurry of alleged violations. One was not paying for workers compensation for the family members who volunteered their time to help him. Yet, more than half of small businesses rely on family members to volunteer their time and energy to running the business.

Mr. Uribe is facing over $10,000 in fines plus criminal charges against both his business and him personally simply for allowing his family to help his business get off the ground. He has spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer who said this type of aggressive state action against small businesses is not unusual and most of the small business owners she has helped were forced to close down.

Many small business owners do not know about the mountains of regulations states place on them. States provide little to no guidance, and generally provide no leniency, refusing to allow first time offenders a chance to comply and spare their businesses. If Mr. Uribe is forced to close, he does not know what he will do. The restaurant he used to work at is permanently closed, and his wife recently died making him the sole provider for his two daughters and grandson.

This problem is not unique to Nevada. In Virginia, Air Force veteran and immigrant Fernando Torrez also faced unreasonable big government barriers to opening up his small business in Alexandria. He now advocates for lifting these barriers and allowing small businesses to have a chance. He says that making it easier for Hispanic small businesses to flourish by helping them instead of aggressively prosecuting them for unintentionally violating rules they did not know existed would help the local and national economy.

Given the economic contributions of Hispanic small business owners, big government is doing the entire nation a disservice by overregulating and aggressively prosecuting these otherwise upstanding members of the community. Mr. Uribe and Mr. Torrez are the types of small business owners the government should be helping succeed, not strangling out of existence.

Aniela Szymanski is an attorney and veteran advocate. Martin Martinez is a Hispanic community policy advocate and small business owner. Both are veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps.

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