I don't know about Chinese or Korean communities but a lot of the indians that you mention primarily come through via family ties.

One person gets here (alone or family) and files for immigration papers for their immediate relatives, starts working here (usually at an establishment of a relative or a person from the same community), makes enough money, transitions to setting up a new business and the someone else takes their place at the previous establishment. That's how the motels and 7/11,Dunkin etc. chains are run ..

This book had a nice description of this phenomenon. http://www.amazon.com/Dhandho-Investor-Value-Method-Returns/...

That's usually the case for DDonuts and Subways but Indians who create high tech startups are usually the ones who stood in line for a greencard ( sometimes for decades ).

The Chinese/Korea/Indian people come here mostly on 12 hr/weekday and weekend indentured servitude via PhD or post-doc program; a few also come on the H1B servitude program.

The FOB immigrants owning stores in Chinatown have either relations to U.S citizens (e.g., uncle, cousins) or they were born in the country and never bothered to try to learn English well (which is fine by me, since I speak Chinese as well).

Also there are quite few bars in Chinatown; they are just in the basement of the restaurants where illegal gambling takes place.

> How do all the Chinese/Korean/Indian people in the US do it?

A lot of those come via green card lottery. That still means it's hard.

I don't know about Koreans, Indians/Chinese are NOT eligible for green-card lottery program.