I was accosted at a party this weekend by an aggrieved Bosnian transplanted to Utah a good few years now. He wanted to know why he wasn't represented. By whom I asked? By what he replied. Why isn't there a European chamber of commerce?---
He ticked off a short list of active chambers you can find in Salt Lake City. Asian, Hispanic and Latin-American, Native American Indian and Polynesian. So why not European?
I didn't have an answer, but he does have a point. It is a strange anomoly. There are, afterall, dozens if not more of European native owned businesses. Just restaurants alone you have German, French, a solid handful of Bosnian, Russian, English, Italian and Spanish, many owned by European ex-pats who would conceivably benefit from networking. Or would they? Perhaps these folk aren't interested in the social networking opportunities a chamber offers, let alone feel they need to be represented by an organisation to local government and beyond.
Or perhaps they just want to be left alone.