TROUBLED REFUGEES: MANY HMONG, PUZZLED BY LIFE IN U.S., YEARN FOR OLD DAYS IN LAOS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP85M00364R002204200005-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 18, 2007
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: February 16, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2007/12/18CIA-RDP85M00364R002204200005--0
VOL M NO. 33 '* L (ALL FLT W004.,
Accustomed to free Iand, no taxes and llt 4 ~l l
Tro8gbled Refugees tie government, the Hmong are over 4 k'
wheimed by the U.S.'s rules and paper
any Hmon~ Puzzled work. They have a saying: "If you think it's
easy, you don't know America."
A Better Feeling
By Life in U.S., Yearn It is no wonder that one of the most popu-
lar songs in the Hmong community is the
For Old Days in Laos bittersweet "Remember Long Cheng." Long
Cheng was their military stronghold in Laos,
and many of them yearn for the feeling of
Major Finds Part-'fime Job, unity and purpose they had then. Pheng
Vang Is one of those who yearn. Though he
Still Depends on Family; wears tan cowboy boots and jeans, he keeps
his jungle-green military uniform in his
Providence Isn't Paradise closet.
A return to Laos, however, is unlikely.
Hmong and U.S. officials say that up to 70,-
Did 34 Die of Culture Shock? 000 Hrflong In Laos have been killed by re-
venge-seeking Communists since the war
ended--including, they say, thousands' of
By Sreeusr P. MoRnv victims of the lethal mycotoxin "yellow
sinfjRPporterof Ti. WALL STRLET 3OUi414AL rain."
PROVIDENCE, R.I.-A dozen black- All told, there are an estimated two mil-
haired girls, dressed in colorful costumes lion Hmong in the world. Many live in
sprinkled with silver coins, are playing pov China, Burma and Vietnam. Between 150,000
pob, or catch, with boys wearing sneakers and 200,000 are thought to be in Laos, and
and jeans. some 52,000 other Hmong from Laos are in
The youngsters take turns singing tradi- refugee camps in Thailand. The U.S. is the
tional love songs over a screechy micro- most likely country to accept them, but
phone. The performances are restrained and many refuse to leave the camps because of
subtle, and the older spectators smile. Hours relatives' stories about the difficulties of ad-
later, a group of shaggy-haired teen-agers justing to American life.
plug in electric guitars and the girls begin to Hmong who have come to the U.S. have
dance frenetically, their silver coins jan- received not only welfare but also special
gling like tambourines against the hand- help finding jobs and learning English.
made dresses. The older folks wince. These days, though, they feel pressure to get
The scene is a New Year's celebration at off public assistance. The Reagan adminis-
a community center in South Providence-a tration says that it wants refugees to start
hellhole of ramshackle tenements, charred pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
buildings and abandoned cars-and the peo- Mysterious ' Ailment
ple are Hmong (pronounced Mung), some of For some Hmong, all the problems of life
America's newest refugees. They are from In a new land may be simply too much.
the mountains of Laos, where they farmed Thirty-four have died from unknown causes
with hand tools and water buffalo, believed in recent years, prompting speculation that
in spirits, and had no written language until they succumbed to severe culture shock.
20 years ago. They were perhaps America's The federal Centers for Disease Control is
most tenacious and loyal ally in Southeast looking into the mysterious deaths, most of
Asia, losing 50,000 people, or 10% of their which occur during sleep. The agency says
population, by the time the United States' it hasn't ruled out "emotional triggers"
secret war" in Laos ended in 1975. caused by stress.
The Mists of Time The Hmong are a simple rural people,
Amounting to just 8% of the 625,000 Indo- and scores of them brought hoes and cross.
chinese who have come to the U.S. since bows with them for their new life in Amer-
1975, the 51,000 Hmong refugees are "emerg- ica. Such tools were useless as the Hmong
ing from the mists of time." says John were thrust into urban jungles and aban-
Finck, a Hmong specialist for the Rhode Is. doned to worn-out tenements-some without
land Office of Refugee Resettlement. furniture, beat or hot water. They had asked
"Whether they make it or not is anybody's ; to be resettled together but were spread
guess." I "like a thin layer of butter throughout the
Federal officials say that no refugee t' country so they'd disappear," says Mr.
group is having more difficulty adjusting to Finck of the Rhode Island resettlement of-
the U.S. They warn that seeds are being lice. Longstanding family and clan ties
sown for prolonged dependence on welfare spurred waves of secondary migration, and
and continued isolation from society. Some now there are major clusters of Hmong in
75% of the Hmong are believed to be on wel- St. Paul, Minn. (about 10,200), and in some
fare, the largest percentage of any refugee half-dozen California cities (a total of about
group. Many have yet to find their first job 27,000).
acid most can't speak English. Providence, with 2,500, has the largest
"Nobody knows inside our hearts and Hmong population the the st. The city was
minds bow much we hurt," says Pheng founded 16 years after Pilgrims landed
Vang, a former lieutenant in the Laotian air and has traditionally been a first home for
force who directed U.S. bombing attacks in many refugees and immigrants. The same
Laos and now works as a social-worker aide ~ clapboard three-deckers that housed Irish
In Providence. -like the girls at the. New Please Turn to Page 25, Column I
Fear's party, he feels torn between the new and the old. Some Hmong are bitter, but
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Tr
oubled Refugees: Many Hrnong, Puzzled by U.S.,
'Yearn for the Unity and Sense of Purpose They. Knew
Continued From First Page
and Italian immigrants have become homes
for thousands of Hispanic, Portuguese and
Cambodians, and now Hmong.
The Hmong here include Teng Thao, who
came to Providence seven years ago and
was lucky to find a job as a machine opera-
tor making as much. as $8.50 an hour. A
moon-faced man with a broad smile. Teng
Thao saved enough to buy a rusty Ford van.
Last year, with a $1,500 grant from St. Mi-
chael's Catholic Church. be bought a $23,000
three-family house large enough for the 15
people he cares for--his wife and three chil-
dren, his mother, his five young brothers
and sisters, and five war orphans.
But Teng Thao was laid off several
months ago, and his $153 in weekly jobless
pay hasn't been enough to take care of the
mortgage and the loan for his van while
paying the heat bill. So he has been drawing
down his savings and he worries about los-
ing everything. A veteran of 1,500 missions
as a forward air controller for U.S. pilots in
Laos, Teng Than says be has never been so
frightened. His mother, Youa Chang, who
lives in a second-floor apartment, says,
"I'm not happy here. I'd rather be
home."
Responsibility for refugees is scattered
among four federal units, and Congress's
General Accounting Office recently urged an
end to this "fragmentation." Even Washing-
ton bureaucrats concede they have mishan-
dled resettlement of the Hmong. "Frankly, I
haven't seen any evidence that anyone
really understands" the Hmong, says Phillip
N. Hawkes, the director of the U.S. Office of
Refugee Resettlement. H. Eugene Douglas,
the U.S. coordinator for refugee affairs,
adds that it has taken officials a long time to
realize the Hmong are different from other
Southeast Asians. "It' r) very American not
to think things through," he says.
Many Hmong continue to turn to Gen.
Vang Pao, their military leader In Laos, for
advice on how to succeed in America. A
stubby, pugnacious man who pounds his
desk when agitated, the general divorced
five of his six wives to move to the U.S. with
his 26 children. He lives on a 408-acre farm
in Missoula, Mont., and travels extensively
to Hmong communities around the country
in an old van.
On a recent visit to Santa Ana, Calif., he
was greeted by dozens of men who pressed
their hands together and bowed respectfully.
The general wore a crisp gray suit and ad-
vised the men, whose jacket sleeves drooped
to their knuckles, to get jobs to "show
Americans you really want to work."
'We Have Become Children'
Without job skills, that hasn't been easy.
Maj. Wang Seng Khang, a former battalion
commander who led 10,000 Hmong in a Thai-
land refugee camp, has been in the U.S. al-
most five years. Only recently did he find
his first job: a part-time position as liaison
between a church and, the Providence
Hmong community. The major, a proud
man used to the prestige of leadership, feels
emasculated. He depends on his wife's job
at a jewelry factory to pay the rent and on
his children to translate Rnplish for him_ Of
Hmong leaders, he says: "We have become
children in this country."
Subservience Is an uncomfortable feeling
for Hmong, who have traditionally worked
for themselves. Some were insulted when
Claiborne Pell, a Democrat of Rhode Island,
one of the three richest men in the U.S. Sen-
ate, noted during a meeting last October
that many earlier immigrants to the U.S.
had started by taking jobs as domestics
Doua Yang. who was at the meeting and
whose parents and sister were killed by the
Pathet Lao, says Hmong don't want to be-
come "coolies."
Little is known about the Hmong, except
that they began migrating to mountainous
areas of Southeast Asia from China some 150
years ago. The Indochinese called them
Meo. or barbarians, although the word
Hmong in the Hmong language means free.
They lived peaceably In tiny thatched-but
villages outside the mainstreams of their
host countries and were sustained by the
spirits they believed In, by their clans and
by opium, which they grew prodigiously.
In the 1950s, Communist insurgents began
attacking their villages In Iaos. By the
early 1960s, the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency was supplying and financing Gen.
Vang Pao's 30,000-man Hmong army. Dur-
ing the war, entire Hmong villages were
wiped out. Men and boys were drafted by
Gen. yang Pao-plucked from primitive
tribal villages and transported to a life of
radios, jets and mortars. Some Hmong rode
in helicopter gunships before they had ever
seen cars or electric lights. Pheng Vang be-
came a soldier at age 13% and stayed until
the end of the war-nine years. "I still have
nightmares," he says.
Trek to Thailand
When the war ended, Pheng Vang and
more than 100,000 Hmong walked hundreds
of miles to the border, braving currents and
Communist bullets to cross the Mekong
River into Thailand. Many died trying to es-
cape. Those who survived spent months or
years in remote camps surrounded by
barbed wire and patrolled by Thai police. At
the time, the refugee stream into the U.S.
was swollen with Vietnamese. It wasn't until
the late 1970s that most Hmong began arriv-
ing in this country.
They arrived with little preparation.
Some used furniture polish for cooking oil,
washed their hair with Lestoil and tried to
heat their apartments with charcoal grills.
Volunteer agencies were supposed to find
housing and provide counseling, but a gov-
ernment study found that nearly one-third of
the agencies never saw refugees after their
first month.
Pheng Vang arrived in February 1976-
the first Hmong in Providence. On his first
morning he saw his first snow: a cottony
sheet that covered the garbage-strewn
streets of South Providence and reminded
him of a warning of his grandfather's:
"Snow means death." He stayed inside the
first day, sometimes startled by the clang-
ing radiators in his third-floor walkup and
worrying about things he had never before
encountered: rent, heating bills, gas bills,
electricity bills.
Brothers Xoua and. Xiong Thao recall be-
ing referred to a South Providence apart-
ment that had no heat, hot water, refrigera?
tor, stove, beds or furniture. Even the win-
dows were broken, they say. City officials
say that more than 60%6 of the housing in
South Providence-where many Hmong
live-doesn't meet minimum codes.
Victims of Crimes
Dozens of Hrnong have had their apart-
ments burglarized, and cars stolen, and
some Hmong children have been beaten
walking home from school. They seldom
complain to police because they still feel
like "guests" In America. Few understand
such criminal behavior. Providence police
say they can't recall a single Hmong being
arrested for a crime.
Just as fear has driven many Hmong
deep Inside their apartments, need has sent
others to ghetto churches. Few Hmong be-
lieve that Christ is more than another super-
natural being that might help them in Amer
Ica. Tia Kha, the director of Providence's
Hmong-Lao Community Association, says he
joined the Calvary Baptist Church to get
free or cheap secondhand clothing. The Rev.
William Tanguay of St. Michael's suggests
that Hrnong join "because they want Ameri-
can friends."
Younger Hmong are adapting better than
older ones. Teachers at St. Michael's ele-
mentary school! say that Hmong children
show strong academic and artistic abilities.
Xoua Thao spoke little English when he
came to Providence six years ago. Now he
is a junior pre-med student at Brown Uni-
versity here and hopes to become the first
Hmong doctor in America.
Overall, however, the Hmong transition
remains painfully slow. Mr. Finck recalls
taking a group of older Hmong from Provi-
dence to Plimoth Plantation-a reconstruc-
tion of a 17th-century Pilgrim village. The
Hmong examined the chickens and the pigs.
took samples of the herbs and affectionately
rubbed the thatched-roof houses-not unlike
the ones they left behind.
When they were about to leave, Soua Xal
Thao, a small man with gray bristles poking
from his leathery chin, leaned on his cane
and asked Mr. Finck through an Inter-
preter: "Can we move here and make this
our home?"
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Approved For Release 2007/12/18: CIA-RDP85M00364R002204200005-0