BACKGROUND
The Southeast Asian American refugee community traces its origins to the mid to late twentieth century Cold War conflicts in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, tied together by their shared history of French and American imperialism. Once war broke out in Vietnam in the mid-1950s between the communist North and American-backed South, the conflict quickly spread throughout Southeast Asia and became a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. American intervention escalated in the mid to late 1960s as the United States attempted to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and eventually the rest of Southeast Asia. To hinder the movement of Vietnamese communists and prevent the seizure of power by communist regimes in neighboring countries, the American military began clandestine bombing and special forces operations Laos and Cambodia, often referred to as the Secret War. These spillover and collateral effects of American intervention in Southeast Asia culminated in Black April of 1975 when the communist forces unified Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia, and the Pathet Lao assumed governmental control in Laos.
With millions of lives lost in Southeast Asia, the looming fear of political persecution and genocide by the newly consolidated communist governments, and poverty and starvation, more than three million refugees began a mass exodus from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Coming in multiple waves beginning with the most educated and wealthy and ending with the most rural and poor of the population, refugees fled their homelands and sought refuge in neighboring countries before beginning the resettlement process. First arriving in refugee camps in Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, Southeast Asian refugees experienced trauma from their tumultuous journeys over land and sea. Many refugees had little or no legal documentation, like birth certificates or passports, due to the wars, changes in governments, rural origins, and the chaos of refugee camps. Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese refugees were resettled around the world, but many arrived in the United States as legal refugees through the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, the Refugee Act of 1980, and the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1989. These resettlement programs were officially terminated in 1997.
Upon arrival in the United States, Southeast Asian refugees, facing the triple trauma of displacement, resettlement, and assimilation with limited education and language skills, were processed in one of four military bases: Camp Pendleton, CA, Fort Chaffee, AR, Fort Indiantown Gap, PA, and Eglin Air Force Base, FL. To complete the resettlement process, many refugees were sponsored by individual families, faith-based organizations, or other community organizations that assisted the newcomers with adapting to American life and getting back on their feet. For many, this meant being resettled in under-resourced communities with high poverty rates, high crime rates, and high rates of welfare assistance. Entering new communities, Southeast Asian refugees were not always welcomed with open arms, having to form gangs for protection, performing below standards in school, and falling into crime. Even today, Southeast Asian American refugee communities, consisting of diasporic populations from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, have above average rates of poverty and below average educational attainment statistics.
SOUTHEAST ASIANS BY THE NUMBERS
In 2015, there were nearly 2,000,000 Vietnamese Americans, 330,000 Cambodian Americans, 300,000 Hmong Americans, and 271,000 Laotian Americans living in the United States. (Pew Research Center)
65.8% of Cambodian, 66.5% of Laotian, 63.2% of Hmong, and 51.1% of Vietnamese Americans have not attended college. (SEARAC)
18.2% of Cambodian American, 27.4% of Hmong American, 12.2% of Laotian American, and 13.0% of Vietnamese American families live below the poverty level. (SEARAC)
39.2% of Cambodian Americans, 37.6% of Hmong Americans, 38.4% of Laotian Americans, and 51.5% of Vietnamese Americans speak English less than “very well.” (SEARAC)
PBS - Pass or Fail in Cambodia Town
A CRISIS IN OUR COMMUNITY
Resettled as refugees fleeing war, poverty, and genocide, Southeast Asian American communities face deportation from a country that once welcomed them with open arms. Watch this video from AJ+ for a briefing on the issue of deportation within the Southeast Asian American refugee community.
DETENTION AND DEPORTATION
Many refugees, after being required to apply for Legal Permanent Resident status after 1 year in the United States, do not continue to pursue full citizenship. For non-citizens, falling into the school-to-prison pipeline due to their circumstances in under-resourced area often results in being marked eligible for deportation for commission of criminal offenses. For more information on the legal framework allowing for the deportation of Southeast Asian American refugee populations, please visit the “Legal Framework” page. For more information on the impact that deportation has on communities and families, please visit the “Psychosocial Impact” page.
THE ROLE OF DATA
While Asian Americans as a racial group are often stereotyped to be highly educated, high performing, and wealthy, aggregated data fails to appreciate and capture the diversity of Asian America. Many Asian Americans arrived in the United States through family, work, and education-based visas through the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act and can be considered to have some level of social capital and resources as voluntary migrants. Southeast Asian American refugees, as forced migrants, arrived through much different circumstances and legal channels. Due to high rates of education and work-based immigration in the post-1965 period, Asian American rates of college graduation and income generation often exceed national averages; however, this aggregation of data on the basis of race tends to obscure lower performing groups. Thus, data collection at federal, state, and local levels fails to account for the experiences of Southeast Asian American refugee communities among others. In order to make issues like Southeast Asian American refugee education and deportation more visible, data must be disaggregated by ethnic group. By collecting and analyzing data at the ethnic level, the unique historical and demographic contexts of each ethnic group can be taken into consideration along with indicators of socioeconomic attainment.
