Why do some types of people tend to work in certain types of places?

Latino workers in low end service industry jobs, on the other hand, may have arrived in the US via less than legitimate ways People keep bringing this up, and I don't think it's offensive or anything, but keep in mind that a massively hugely GIGANTIC proportion of Latin-Americans didn't technically immigrate at all. The Puerto Rican community in New York came to the mainland as US citizens. Puerto Ricans are the predominant Latin-American community in New York City. A lot of Mexican-American families have been living in what is now the US as long as most white families, if not longer. There's a very long history of (totally legal and even encouraged) emigration from Mexico to the US. Just because you're ethnically Mexican doesn't mean you're an immigrant or the child/grandchild of recent immigrants. I'm not trying to play PC police here, but reminding everyone that a lot of the people we're talking about in this thread are not immigrants at all. Which is something that makes the original question really tough to answer.

A big part of this is probably just that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City#Immigration.

Assuming your observations are accurate, I would seek out data on business ownership and employment sorted by ethnicity. My assumption would be that there are enough small businesses owned by Chinese-Americans to hire most or many of the available Chinese-American or Chinese immigrant workers. Conversely, my further assumption would be that there are not enough businesses owned by Latino-Americans immigrants to hire most or many of the Latino-American or Latino immigrant workers, so those workers seek employment elsewhere.

I once attempted to apply for work in a Chinese restaurant (I am first generation mixed race Latina, native English speaker). They were very, very surprised I'd want to work there and explained it would be impossible because all all communication in the kitchen-written orders, conversation-was in Cantonese. They did speak English, as demonstrated by the fact we were able to have this conversation. This can't explain every instance, but I imagine if you were a business owner who was most comfortable conversing in X Chinese Dialect, you would hire workers who spoke X Chinese Dialect; and if you were an entry level worker who was most comfortable conversing in X Chinese Dialect, you would have a hard time getting hired where that was not the preferred language.

Here in the SF Bay Area I know of one Chinese restaurant where the maitre'd and servers are Asian but the busboys and most of the cooks are Hispanic. http://www.thekirin.com/ in Berkeley. I imagine there are several factors: 1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_language_in_the_United_States, so a worker who only knows Spanish can get a job in more restaurants than a worker who only knows Mandarin or Cantonese. 2) Managers like to hire people who are known - friends of friends. And Hispanic and Chinese immigrants are more likely to be connected to members of their own ethnic communities, so you see a multiplier effect at businesses who have previously hired members of one or the other ethnic groups. 3) There are, I am guessing, way more recent Hispanic immigrants than Chinese, and given the relative ease of immigrating illegally to the US from Mexico (overland) vs China (overseas), you have more Hispanic workers willing to work illegally, which can be much cheaper.

A few things come to mind. First, many immigrants from Asian countries are here legally, either having refugee status, being related to American citizens (or marrying them), or via some other method not commonly available to Hispanic immigrants such as having an advanced degree. I think you'd probably be surprised at how many Chinese restaurant owners have Ph.D.s in engineering or some such. That means they can transact business legally and don't need to be paid under the table, which permits them to own and operate small businesses in the clear. Second, because they're immigrating legally, many Asians bring some property with them. It may not be much, but it may well be enough to get a restaurant business or similar enterprise going, especially when the family all works for preferential wages and profits are used to benefit the family as a whole rather than the owner as owner. A Hispanic crossing the border with the help of a coyote is far more likely to bring debt than assets and is in no position to start a business. Third, Asians, similar to Hispanics but different from most Americans, have an incredible sense of family and filial piety. Businesses are family affairs. It's not just that everyone in the restaurant is Chinese (or whatever), it's that everyone in the restaurant is related to the owner. A Chinese business owner is going to go looking for relatives to hire, and a Chinese worker looking for a job is going to go looking for relatives to hire him. This goes hand-in-hand with the legal immigration bit, as it's possible for a legal Chinese immigrant to look for work in ways that an illegal Hispanic immigrant can't. I'd be willing to bet that if there are a bunch of Latino guys on a work crew that a fair number of them are related a decent amount of the time, but this is harder to organize and maintain if the business isn't a family business. Fourth, there really are a lot more Hispanics/Latinos than there are Asians in this country. Something like 5% of the country is of Asian extraction, but something like 16% of the country is of Hispanic/Latino extraction. You're just going to see a lot more Hispanics, period.

if you were a business owner who was most comfortable conversing in X Chinese Dialect, you would hire workers who spoke X Chinese Dialect; and if you were an entry level worker who was most comfortable conversing in X Chinese Dialect, you would have a hard time getting hired where that was not the preferred language. This calls to mind a data point that might be of interest to andromache. I once went on a foodie adventure to a Korean BBQ joint in Flushing, Queens, where nobody on staff spoke English. However, one of the people I was there with is Chinese and happens to speak a dialect that a lot of Chinese restaurant workers tend to know. The restaurant in question had some Chinese-American waitstaff, one of whom happened to speak the same dialect. So we were able to order food in this Korean restaurant by interpreting through a specific Chinese dialect. Which implies that the idea that Chinese-Americans tend to stick to Chinese-American businesses might not be true. Either that, or it's a total fluke that we ran into a Chinese-American waiter at a Korean-American restaurant.

I think the other point to remember here is that there aren't really as many first-generation Hispanic immigrants in NYC as you might think there are. People may appear to be first-generation because they're speaking in Spanish and have low-paying jobs, but in fact, that may not mean anything.

DarlingBri has the correct answer I believe, in the case of Asian immigrants these are called "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown#Benevolent_and_business_associations". If you walk around any Chinatown you will see the buildings for these organizations, they are kind of like community centers. I'm a white dude who lives in Chinatown, but my understanding of it has been that these benevolent associations will assist families in making the move to the states. Part of that is either setting them up with jobs for when they get here (obviously makes immigration much easier with a visa sponsor, etc.) or also helping them start their own businesses (by navigating local building codes, inspections, etc, providing capital, or workers who speak Mandarin/Cantonese). In return these businesses pay dues into the benevolent association, which provides social services and support for immigrants and continues the cycle. This is basically how Chinatowns are built, and why there really isn't a Hispanic equivalent. The benevolent association closest to my apartment has a huge wall of notices for job and apartment openings tacked up... and they are all in Chinese, which I'm sure plays a large part.