Laotians Teach US How Not To Resettle Refugees
By Marjorie Valbrun
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- When Fu Hang decided to move here a year ago to start
a new job, he had no reservations about leaving the sleepy Michigan town
where he and his seven siblings were raised and where 40 cousins were
neighbors. Mr. Hang, 29 years old, was following the proven path taken by
his older brothers Yee Leng, who moved here in 1994, and Lao Lu, who
came in 1997. More broadly, he was participating in an extraordinary
second migration of thousands of Hmong tribes people, many of whom
arrived in the U.S. from Laos as political refugees in the aftermath of the
Vietnam War. The Hmong, an ethnic minority in Laos that sided with the
U.S. in the war, had been forced to flee when the communists prevailed in
Southeast Asia. At the time, the State Department intentionally dispersed
Hmong refugees throughout the U.S. in an effort to make their presence
less conspicuous and reduce anticipated hostility toward them.
But, in many instances, the unintended consequence was to isolate Hmong
families from their broader clans -- 19 in all -- which formed the basis of
their cultural life in Laos, and to make it difficult for them to develop
economic or political power in their new homeland. The contrast with life
in tropical Laos, where the Hmong farmed their hilly land with crude hand
tools, was jarring -- especially when small groups were plunked down in,
say, North Dakota in the middle of winter, to adjust to snow and shopping
malls at the same time.
The current migration to Minnesota, spurred by that state's strong
economy and vibrant Southeast Asian immigrant community, is reversing
the dispersal policy and undoing many of its effects. It is also a case study
of how immigrants can regroup within the U.S. to achieve economic and
cultural advantages. Coming from such communities as Providence, R.I.;
Brockton, Mass.; Milwaukee; Detroit; and Fresno, Calif., the Hmong have
trekked to Minneapolis-St. Paul in such numbers that the Twin Cities
metropolitan area now has the largest Hmong
community in the world outside Southeast Asia. Minnesota's Hmong
population, estimated at 60,000, has more than tripled since 1990, when
the U.S. Census counted only 16,833. The draws for Mr. Hang and
thousands of others are numerous: one of the lowest unemployment rates
among the nation's major metropolitan areas, plenty
of manufacturing jobs, good public schools and universities, white-collar
opportunities for second-generation Hmong-Americans with college
degrees, plentiful affordable housing, dozens of empty storefronts that are
being snatched up for new Hmong businesses, and, perhaps most
important, the Hmong's emerging political presence.
The state government, eager for an infusion of workers, has embraced
their arrival and crafted programs and policies designed to assist them.
Residents' welcoming attitude has spawned a Hmong saying well-known in
other parts of the U.S.: "Minnesota: cold winter, warm heart."
The Hmong have been moving around the U.S. since the arrival of the first
families in the mid-'70s. The Hang family, for instance, arrived in Saginaw,
Mich., in 1975. "We met our sponsors at the airport and then were whisked
off way to the boonies," Mr. Hang recalls. His family ended up in Richville,
Mich., 90 minutes north of Detroit, while one of his uncles and the uncle's
family were sent to Austin, Texas. "Although they had a great sponsor, they
were the only Hmong family down there and they felt very isolated," Mr.
Hang says. A year after arriving, the Hangs of Austin joined the Hangs of
Richville. Then, some years later, it was on to St. Paul for the Hang
brothers and one cousin. Steve Yee Thao saw even more of the country
before making his move to Minnesota in 1998. Mr. Thao came to the U.S.
as a child when his family was sent to Iowa in 1976. Chasing employment,
they moved to Stockton, Calif., then to Kennewick, Wash., then back to
Stockton. From there it was on to Fresno, where the proximity to farming
jobs attracted a large population of Hmong. But
the Fresno area proved unappealing to many Hmong immigrants, who
were socially isolated from the rest of the community, according to Mr.
Thao. In the past two years, Fresno's Hmong population dropped to
22,000 from 35,000, with most of those who departed making their way to
Minnesota. Researchers in Fresno who have tracked those who left
attribute the exodus to the decline of the Central Valley's agriculture
economy and to California's tough welfare-reform polices, which forced
many Hmong off public assistance. Messrs. Hang and Thao found
Minnesota to be awash in career opportunities. New Hmong businesses
were opening every day -- Mr. Hang says there are now well over 200
Hmong-owned businesses in town. But the owners, many of them with
limited English skills, needed help understanding complicated regulations
and developing business plans. Mr. Hang, with a bachelor's degree in
business administration, was primed to fill the void: He accepted a position
providing job counseling to budding Hmong entrepreneurs and smallbusiness owners for the East Side Neighborhood Development Co., a local,
nonprofit economic-development center.
Last year, Mr. Hang surveyed St. Paul's east side, which has a large
concentration of Hmong -- about 15,000 -- and counted 45 Hmong
businesses. Along with grocery stores and restaurants, dozens of Hmongowned auto- and life-insurance companies, temporary-employment firms
and home health-care agencies have opened. There are also 35 Hmong
real-estate agents in St. Paul, a sign of the boom in Hmong home
ownership. Lately, some agents have gone out on their own and started
ethnic-based agencies. Americanasian Realty, with 23 agents, bills itself as
"the No. One Realtor Team in Asian Community," in the 252-page Hmong
business directory. Two months ago, Mr. Hang switched jobs and became
executive director of the nonprofit Asian Development Corp., an
organization started by Asian-American leaders. "Economic development
is the new frontier for the Hmong community, a way for us to challenge
ourselves as well as to develop opportunities for the Hmong people," Mr.
Hang says. Last month, Mr. Hang's younger brother, Tou Ger, 24, who
recently received his master's degree in information science, joined his
brothers in the Twin Cities to take a job at Medtronic Inc., the surgicaldevice maker. Meanwhile, Mr. Thao, 28, has settled into a job producing
"Kev Koom Siab" ("Path to Unity"), a Hmong public-affairs talk show that
airs twice weekly on public television. He is also publisher of the Hmong
Tribune, a free English-language monthly with a circulation of 25,000,
which he started two months after arriving here with $30,000 in savings.
Leaving Fresno for St. Paul, says Mr. Thao, "was the next step in my
life. I wanted to experience really being a part of a place where the Hmong
community is integrated with the rest of the community." An additional
virtue of living among more than 60,000 Hmong in the Twin
Cities: a plethora of marriage prospects. Hmong aren't permitted to marry
within their clan and therefore must live in fairly large groups to have
contact with potential partners from other clans.
Minnesota's warm welcome goes back to the days immediately following
the Vietnam War, when an established network of local churches and faithbased refugee-assistance organizations volunteered to sponsor Southeast
Asian refugees, including Hmong families, and to provide them with
housing, jobs and social services. Vocational schools were enlisted to teach
them to speak, read and write in English. Community and business leaders,
many from German, Scandinavian and Irish immigrant backgrounds,
signed on to help.
With all the area's advantages, the Hmong experience here has been far
from trouble-free. Members of the older generation, particularly those who
have not learned to speak English, suffer high rates of depression and
suicide. Hmong parents clash with their Americanized teenage children.
Husbands feel threatened by the newfound independence of their working
wives. As a result, domestic violence is a recurring problem in Hmong
communities. Teen pregnancy and membership in violent Hmong gangs
are also problems, as are high welfare-dependency rates because of the
large size of Hmong families, some with 10 or more children. In some
cases, these factors have hurt the Hmong reputation in the larger
community. Still, Kao Ly Ilean Her says the move here from Clinton, Iowa,
in 1985 was the best thing that could have happened to her family. For
most of the nine years the Hers were in Clinton, they were the only Hmong
family in town. The Hers debated moving to California but settled on
Minnesota. "If you wanted a farming job you moved to California, but if
you wanted a more professional position then you moved to Minnesota,"
Ms. Her says. The family, including her mother and father, now lives
among 5,000 members of their clan. "It has meant a lot for me
reconnecting with my cultural roots and having an opportunity to work
with the Hmong community," says Ms. Her, a lawyer and executive
director of the Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans, an organization
created by the state legislature in 1985 to advise state lawmakers on issues
affecting the Asian-American community. "I don't think if I stayed in Iowa
I would be in this profession," Ms. Her says. "We have definitely benefited
economically. The move has been excellent."