St. Louis Invokes Lazarus for Immigrants With Urgent Stakes

Ibrahim Vajzovic sits behind a large wooden desk at First Bosnian Insurance Agency, the company he started in St. Louis eight years ago, and talks about the values of education and hard work. It’s one of three businesses he owns, in addition to teaching a course at Webster University, a liberal-arts college in Webster Groves.

Vajzovic, 53, who came to the U.S. in 1994 as a war refugee from Bosnia, is the portrait of a striving, successful immigrant that business leaders would like to see replicated, by the thousands. They say nothing short of St. Louis’s survival as a major American city is at stake.