Jose Ramon Barahona, a Salvadoran Who Never Gave Up His Dream
Jose Ramon Barahona, a Salvadoran Who Never Gave Up His DreamSeptember 5, 2007
Ivan Mejia -- EFE
Jose Ramon Barahona came to San Francisco in 1970 and was deported four days later, but he did not stop trying to achieve the "American Dream" and returned to become a successful businessman with activities in both the United States and his native El Salvador.
Barahona, 62, is currently the owner of a cleaning firm and seven restaurants of the Pollo Campero chain in Washington. In his country, he is the administrator of a number of farms.
"I came to San Francisco in 1970 with a tourist visa (and went) to the house of a friend, but on the fourth day he took me to work in the El Sombrero Grande restaurant, and I had been working for half an hour when immigration arrived and deported me the next day," Barahona told Efe in an interview.
After being deported, he waited just two weeks before traveling to the United States again.
"I crossed the border at Tijuana with an illegal visa, and from there I went to San Francisco. And I began looking for work in places different from restaurants, because immigration came there (frequently), and I began working repairing cement sidewalks," he said.
To fix his immigration status, he sought a lawyer who worked to get a government pardon for having worked for half an hour on a tourist visa - an immigration violation - and in 1974 he was granted legal residence in the United States.
"That year, I went to Washington to work as an orderly from the emergency room to the operating room in Suburban Hospital," Barahona said, adding that while he worked in hospitals he learned English to be able to pursue his studies in health care at the University of Maryland.
In 1977, with a partner, he applied for the permits to start the Able Service Maintenance company to do cleaning at hospitals and office buildings. The firm began operating with four workers and has since grown to about 500 employees.
"I came to have 12 hospitals (as clients)," he recalled, adding, "and we expanded to commercial buildings, clinics and radio and television stations, as well as to the Pentagon and the Capitol."
One day he returned to Washington from Costa Rica and he noticed that when passengers boarded the airplane in El Salvador, many were carrying boxes of Pollo Campero takeout food. That happened on all the flights, and that's when Barahona got the idea for another of his business ventures.
"I decided to go and speak with the owners of Pollo Campero in Guatemala," he said, and he was able to acquire the franchise authorization to open seven stores in Washington starting in 2003.
Barahona, who declined to provide his gross annual revenues from his various businesses, is also a real estate investor and owns a sand quarry in Florida. All told, his businesses employ about 1,400 people.
"The ... United States is the promised land for me," said Barahona, who funnels a percentage of the profits from his companies to the Barahona Foundation, which helps low-income people pay for medical treatment and provides university scholarships to outstanding young people in the United States and Latin America.
For all his contributions to the community, on July 19, 1999, U.S. lawmakers honored him with the Congressional Medal of Freedom.
And for being an example for his countrymen, on Aug. 16, 2007, the Salvadoran Congress named him a "Meritorious Son of El Salvador."
"For me, it means that I fulfilled the dream of a responsible, disciplined, organized Salvadoran; but I owe the prize to the Salvadoran people," he said. EFE
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