Roy Lee and the American Dream

The Immigrant Who Became a Santa Barbara County Supervisor

By Melinda Burns Mon Jan 20, 2025 | 06:24pm

It’s a tale of two Americas.

Vowing to make good on a top campaign promise that whipped his followers into an anti-immigrant frenzy, President Donald J. Trump declared a “national emergency” on the border with Mexico during his inaugural address at the Capitol Rotunda on Monday. He got a standing ovation.

“I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” he said.

Shortly after, in unscripted remarks to a larger audience of loyalists at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, Trump referred to immigrants as “people coming into our country from prisons and mental institutions.” He said building a wall on the border was “self-preservation” in politics.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforce is made up of immigrants, including the undocumented. Beyond the cruelty of the mass deportations that Trump pledges to launch, his critics are predicting dire unintended consequences — the staggering cost of such an operation, for starters, and significant labor shocks across the economy, particularly in construction, agriculture, and hospitality.

Trump’s invective stands in a marked contrast to the celebratory mood earlier this month as Roy Lee, a 43-year-old immigrant from Taipei, Taiwan, was sworn in as 1st District supervisor at the Santa Barbara County Administration Building, vowing to “serve all residents in our county with transparency, dedication, honesty, and integrity.”

On January 6 in the county’s fabled Mural Room, before a standing-room-only crowd sprinkled with dignitaries, Lee drew laughter with his first words: “I am not a politician.” A day later, at his formal installation, Laura Capps, the new board chair, beamed at Lee and told him, “You radiate goodness” — surely, words that have never before been spoken from the dais.

Congressmember Salud Carbajal | Credit: File

Lee, a restaurant owner and former City of Carpinteria councilman, is one of only two immigrants in modern memory to serve on the county’s most powerful board. The other is Salud Carbajal, an immigrant from Moroleón, Guanajuato, Mexico, who was the 1st District supervisor from 2004 to 2016. The district covers the Carpinteria Valley, Summerland, Montecito, eastern Santa Barbara, and the Cuyama Valley.

Since 2016, Carbajal has served as a Democrat in the U.S. Congress representing the 24th District, covering all of Santa Barbara County and parts of San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties. He was recently re-elected to a fifth two-year term.

Lee emigrated to Goleta in 1989 at the age of six; Carbajal was five years old in 1966 when his family left Mexico for Oxnard. Both said they viewed their time in office as an opportunity to return the favor to the country that was so generous to them.

“Anybody that wants to make a better life for themselves and work hard in this country, I fully support that,” Lee said. “That’s what we did. When we came — I didn’t realize it — we were poor. We had everything in our bags. We had to learn how to assimilate and achieve the American dream of home ownership and business ownership. To give back and serve the community: I believe that’s the immigrant dream.”

Carbajal said: “As an immigrant, you are more clear-eyed — both about the privilege that you have, living in this great country, and the idea of service, which is motivated centrally by giving back to the country that has welcomed you. You marvel at the fact that a nation that you were not born into has given you the chance to directly shape its future. And even after serving many years in local and federal government, that feeling does not go away.”

Seeking Office

About 10.6 million people, or about 27 percent of California’s population, are immigrants, the highest share of any state, according to 2023 data from the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonprofit think tank based in San Francisco. California is home to 22 percent of the foreign-born population nationwide.

According to the Pew Research Center, the 118th Congress that ended on January 3 included at least 81 voting members who were foreign born or had at least one parent who was born in another country.

Lee, a Democrat, had had his eye on the 1st District seat in Santa Barbara County for years. Back in 2019, when Capps was running for that seat, he campaigned for her every day, working the lunch and dinner crowd at the Uncle Chen restaurant he owns at 1025 Casitas Pass Road with his parents, Tsai (pronounced “sigh”) and Mei.

Lee’s parents, Mei and Tsai, came to the U.S. from Taiwan in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Today, they own the Uncle Chen Restaurant at 1025 Casitas Pass Road in Carpinteria. | Credit: Carl Perry.

Lee invited Capps to coffee before she announced her campaign.

“I had never met him,” she said. “He was warm but got right to it. He said, ‘I hope you might be running for supervisor.’ I said, ‘I’m planning on it, actually;’ and he said, ‘Good, that means I don’t have to.’”

Capps lost the 2020 election to the incumbent, Das Williams, a career politician and a co-architect of the county’s unpopular 2018 cannabis ordinance. In 2022, Capps won the 2nd district seat for western Santa Barbara and much of the Goleta Valley. Then, last March 5, a robust turnout for Lee in Carpinteria was decisive in his narrow win against Williams.

“I just prayed for him,” Mei said. “Every day, I kept telling him, ‘Do your best and don’t let people down. But enjoy every minute. Don’t put too much stress on yourself.’“

Feeding a Million People

On a recent weekday, the outlines of the Lee family’s odyssey emerged in a conversation with this reporter over cups of tea at Uncle Chen. It was a rare time-out from the family’s busy schedule: At 10 a.m., Tina Lee, Roy’s wife, was carrying heavy tables out to the sidewalk, and Tsai was in the kitchen frying crispy noodles. They were getting ready to open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

“How long is this going to take?” Tina asked.

Tsai Lee bought Uncle Chen in 1995. At 68, he figures he has fed a million people in Taiwan and on the South Coast of Santa Barbara County. Tsai began working as a cook when he was 16. | Credit: Carl Perry.

Tsai was the third of 11 children, born in 1956 in Tamsui, a coastal river district of New Taipei City in northern Taiwan. The country was a one-party state in the grips of martial law, a period that was to last another 30 years. At 16, Tsai went to work as a cook to help support his younger siblings; and at 19, he began two years of military service as a cook in the Taiwanese army.

Tsai was working in a restaurant in Taipei in 1986 when the owner of the China Castle on Chapala Street in Santa Barbara, currently the China Pavilion, offered him a job. On the ride up the California coast to his shared apartment in Goleta, Tsai saw the beach town of Carpinteria and thought, “That’s where I want to live.”

“It reminded him so much of Taiwan,” said Tina, providing translation from Taiwanese.

Once he had saved enough money, Tsai said, he brought over his wife and their two children, Roy and Brian, in 1989. He bought Uncle Chen in 1995, offering Chinese and Szechuan cuisine, and, in 1999, moved his family to the Carpinteria home they share today.

Tsai became an American citizen last fall, taking a day off to pass the test and be sworn in. Mei is currently studying for the test.

At age 68, Tsai figures he has fed a million people.

“He’s the hardest working person I know,” Roy said.

The Lees deflected questions about anti-immigrant sentiment in America, saying it all comes down to how you decide to react.

“This is a nice town, a very nice town, nice people,” Tsai said firmly in English.

“So Welcoming”

As a child, Mei said, Roy was “very responsible and never complained.” Even at three years old, he would turn off the lights or the water if someone forgot to, or stand up on a stool and close a window.

Roy landed in kindergarten in Isla Vista not knowing a word of English; but, he said, “I loved school and everyone was trying to help me blend in. Teachers have always believed in me, and it’s because of them that I am who I am today.” He said he remains fluent in Mandarin, but, unlike Tina, has lost some fluency in Taiwanese. Tina came to the U.S. from Taipei in 2000: Roy, who knew her aunt, picked her up at the airport.

Lee’s wife, Tina, works in the Uncle Chen kitchen, waits tables, and greets customers. She came to the U.S. from Taipei, Taiwan, in 2000. Tina is fluent in Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English and has learned some Spanish, too. | Credit: Carl Perry.

When he was 14, Roy said, he started washing dishes at Uncle Chen. Later, he began busing tables, prepping egg rolls, waiting tables, and, gradually, becoming a good cook. (“My wife likes my cooking,” he said.)

“I don’t see it as work,” Roy said. “I see it as spending time with my family.” Uncle Chen, he said, is the place where his customers celebrated his marriage to Tina and the birth of their three children, Taison, Madison, and Ellie, now 17, 15, and 13, respectively.

Though Tina has recently “fired” him from the restaurant, Lee said, “I try to go in and see the customers. You learn so much by being there.” Of his new job, he said: “I love it. People are so welcoming. It feels to me like they want to work together and get things done. We have to start building trust back in government.”

Melinda Burns is an investigative journalist with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science, and the environment. As a community service, she offers her reports to multiple publications in Santa Barbara County, at the same time, for free.