How a new SBA policy is affecting legal immigrants’ startup costs

VPM | By Scott Simon and Ed McNulty

Published February 28, 2026 at 12:56 PM EST

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The dream of starting a business may become more difficult for many immigrants. A new policy from the Small Business Administration will restrict access to its most popular loans to U.S. citizens only. Legal permanent residents were previously eligible for this funding, which is typically used to cover startup costs that include buying real estate and equipment and hiring staff. That will change tomorrow when the new policy goes into effect.

Cristina Foanene emigrated from Romania to the United States 20 years ago, and she’s now a U.S. citizen and owner of a glass company in Fresno, California, called MCS Glass. Thanks so much for being with us.

CRISTINA FOANENE: My pleasure to be with you today.

SIMON: Do you have any reaction to this new policy by the Small Business Administration?

FOANENE: My only reaction is, I do not know what’s behind that decision taken by the current administration. My business and my husband’s business – the fact that we were permanent residents at that time, we had the opportunity to get the loan. But if we would’ve come to America last year and getting to apply right now, we would’ve lost this opportunity, and most likely, it would be harder to make our dream a reality.

SIMON: What was your life like in Romania? What brought you to the United States?

FOANENE: It was my husband’s dream to come to this beautiful country. He grew up with this wish to discover why America it’s so great, and he wasn’t wrong. It is an amazing country, and there, we are here.

SIMON: Any idea how many jobs your company has created over the years?

FOANENE: Right now, we are 25 team members, amazing women and men that working with us. It gives us a true happiness that we are able to have this impact in Fresno and hire people that are able to provide for their families.

SIMON: You’ve installed a lot of glass over the years, haven’t you?

FOANENE: We were truly blessed to be part of amazing projects that truly impacted the community, working on house authority projects on multifamily projects, as well as hospitals, church, banks. I believe this is part of the process that at that time, we were able to access SBA loan to expand our business. It help us to hire more people, get larger projects that involved a lot of infrastructure for a glass company. It made us where we are today, literally part of our success.

SIMON: There are conventional bank loans available to green card holders, aren’t there?

FOANENE: I believe so. It’s just a harder process, and I felt like SBA, they understand better a small business then a big bank will ever understand. For example, our business, we needed to explain to the SBA committee what’s happening, why do we want to purchase this building. And they want to make sure you are not just buying a property to buy a property but will bring a benefit to the community, you know, creating more jobs, being able to manufacture more and not just real estate investment.

SIMON: Cristina Foanene of MCS Glass company in Fresno, California. Thanks so much for being with us.

FOANENE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Scott Simon

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.

Weekend Edition Saturday has been called by the Washington Post, "the most literate, witty, moving, and just plain interesting news show on any dial," and by Brett Martin of Time Out New York, "the most eclectic, intelligent two hours of broadcasting on the airwaves." Simon has won every major award in broadcasting, including the Peabody, the Emmy, the Columbia-DuPont, the Ohio State Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the Sidney Hillman Award. He received the Presidential End Hunger Award for his coverage of the Ethiopian civil war and famine, and a special citation from the Peabody Awards for his weekly essays, which were cited as "consistently thoughtful, graceful, and challenging." He has also received the Barry M. Goldwater Award from the Human Rights Fund. Recently, he was awarded the Studs Terkel Award.

Simon has hosted many television specials, including the PBS's "State of Mind," "Voices of Vision," and "Need to Know." "The Paterson Project" won a national Emmy, as did his two-hour special from the Rio Earth Summit meeting. He co-anchored PBS's "Millennium 2000" coverage in concert with the BBC, and has co-hosted the televised Columbia-DuPont Awards. He also became familiar to viewers in Great Britain as host of the continuing BBC series, "Eyewitness," and a special on the White House press corps. He has appeared as a guest and commentator on all major networks, including BBC, NBC, CNN, and ESPN.

Simon has contributed articles to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian, and Gourmet among other publications, and won a James Beard Award for his story, "Conflict Cuisine" in Gourmet. He has received numerous honorary degrees.

Sports Illustrated called his book Home and Away: Memoir of a Fan "extraordinary...uniformly superb...a memoir of such breadth and reach that it compares favorably with Fredrick Exley's A Fan's Notes." It was at the top of several non-fiction bestseller lists. His book, and Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball, was Barnes and Noble's Sports Book of the Year. His novel, Pretty Birds, the story of two teenage girls in Sarajevo during the siege, received rave reviews, with Scott Turow calling it, "the most auspicious fiction debut by a journalist of note since Tom Wolfe's. . . always gripping, always tender, and often painfully funny. It is a marvel of technical finesse, close observation, and a perfectly pitched heart." Windy City, Simon's second novel, is a political comedy set in the Chicago City Council. Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other, an essay about the joys of adoption, was published in August 2010.

Simon's tweets to his 1.25 million Twitter followers from his mother's bedside in the summer of 2013 gathered major media attention around the world. They inspired his New York Times bestseller book Unforgettable: A Son, a Mother, and the Lessons of a Lifetime. Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, called the book "poignant, funny, intimate, and unforgettable." Scott Turow called it "a treasure. It is as poignant and tender and wise as Tuesdays with Morrie, with the added virtues of being unflinching and, quite often, very funny." Laurie Halse Anderson just called the book, "Amazing. Breathtaking. Affirming. This book will change lives, restore hopes to the brokenhearted, and remind the rest of us what is truly important." Carlos Lozado of The Washington Post called it, in a rave review, "a book that easily matches its title."

Simon also wrote the book Just Getting Started with Tony Bennett. His latest books is My Cubs: A Love Story about his lifelong fandom of the Chicago Cubs, and their historic World Series victory.

Simon is a native of Chicago and the son of comedian Ernie Simon and Patricia Lyons Simon. He is married to Caroline Richard Simon, and their daughters are Elise and Paulina. His hobbies are books, theater, ballet, British comedy, Mexican cooking, and "bleeding for the Chicago Cubs." He has thrown out the first pitch at Wrigley Field (low and outside) and appeared as Mother Ginger in the Ballet Austin production of The Nutcracker. Scott received the Order of Lincoln from the State of Illinois in 2016, the state's highest honor. He adds, "If you prick me, I'll bleed Chicago Cubs blue."

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