Asian Indian, Korean, and Southeast Asian Immigration

I n 2000 the census reported a population of 11.9 million people of Asian descent (either one Asian group alone or in combination with any other groups) in the United States, making up 4.2 percent of the total U.S. population. The change had been dramatic in the last four decades of the twentieth century. In 1960 the Asian American population was only 878,000, making up less than 1 percent of the total U.S. population. The national backgrounds had changed dramatically as well. In 1960, 99 percent of Asian Americans were from three national backgrounds: 52 percent were Japanese, 27 percent were Chinese, and 20 percent were Filipino. (See chapter 14 for more information on these three groups.) The two largest Asian American groups in 2000 were Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans. They were followed by Asian Indians, Koreans, and Vietnamese, with Japanese as the sixth largest. During the last three decades of the twentieth century, Asian Indians, Koreans, and Vietnamese all developed very large populations. Those three populations together totaled 4.35 million, or 36 percent of the Asian American population. Other Southeast Asian groups, such as Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Thai Americans, as well as Pakistani and Taiwanese Americans, also have developed significant populations. The growth of the Asian American population is due largely to recent immigration. Sixty-six percent of Asian Americans in 2000 were born in Asia.

Selected Asian American Populations, 2000

The first figure reflects people who claimed only one Asian group; the second figure reflects people who claimed one Asian group alone or in any combination.

Immigration to the United States had been nearly impossible for most Asians between 1917 and 1965. Thus, from 1920 until 1960, of the total immigration to the United States, 60 percent came from Europe, 35 percent came from Central and South America, and only 3 percent came from Asia. The Immigration Act of 1917 prohibited all immigration by laborers from the "Asiatic Barred Zone," which included India, Indochina, Afghanistan, Arabia, the East Indies, and other smaller Asian countries. The National Origins Act, or Immigration Act of 1924, set quotas (assigned proportions) for each nationality, greatly favoring immigration from western and northern Europe. It barred entry completely to "aliens ineligible for citizenship." Since the Naturalization Act of 1790 had provided that only "free white persons" could become naturalized citizens (people born in another country, who go through a prescribed process to become U.S. citizens) of the United States, Asians could not become naturalized citizens. After 1924 they were barred entry to the country altogether, and for the next twenty years Asian immigration (excluding Filipinos since they were allowed entry because the Philippines was considered a U.S. territory) to the United States was almost nonexistent.

Asian Indian, Korean, and Southeast Asian Immigration: Fact Focus

• Asian Indians are one of the United States' fastest growing ethnic groups and they are also one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country.
• Many Asian Indians come to the United States on H1-B temporary work visas—the "high-tech visas."
• Americans were introduced to Hinduism and yoga by two Hindu missionaries, or swamis, in the early twentieth century.
• Korean Americans do not tend to form ethnic communities—although there is a Koreatown in Los Angeles. They are the most widely dispersed of any Asian American population.
• About one-third of all Korean Americans who are employed own their own businesses.
• In 1978 thousands of refugees fled Vietnam. Some eighty-five thousand refugees climbed aboard overcrowded, flimsy boats and attempted to cross the sea to safety. These desperate folk came to be known as the "boat people."
• In the early twenty-first century, as many as 1,009,627 Vietnamese Americans spoke Vietnamese at home. It has become the seventh most spoken language in the United States.
• In 1975 in Cambodia, a communist guerrilla revolutionary group called the Khmer Rouge took over the country and began what was to become a program of genocide—the systematic, planned killing of an entire group of people. In the "killing fields" of Cambodia, the death toll ran into the millions.

The restrictions on Asian immigration were lifted only slightly in the years following World War II (1939–45; a war in which Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and

Asian Indian, Korean, and Southeast Asian Immigration: Words to Know

Alien:

A person who is not a citizen of the United States.

Antimiscegenation laws:

Laws prohibiting marriage between races, usually between whites and any other race.

Assimilation:

The way that someone who comes from a foreign land or culture becomes absorbed into a culture and learns to blend into the ways of its predominant, or main, society.

Colony:

A group of people living as a political community in a land away from their home country but ruled by the home country.

Discrimination:

Unfair treatment based on racism or other prejudices.

Emigration:

Leaving one's country to go to another country with the intention of living there. "Emigrant" is used to describe departing from one's country—for example, "she emigrated from Ireland."

Enclave:

A distinct cultural or nationality unit within a foreign territory.

Ethnic:

Relating to a group of people who are not from the majority culture in the country in which they live, and who keep their own culture, language, and institutions.

Exiles:

People who have been sent away from their homeland.

Extended family:

A household that includes not just parents and children, but also other relatives, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins.

Genocide:

The systematic killing or destruction of a racial, ethnic, or cultural group of people.

Immigration:

To travel to a country of which one is not a native with the intention of settling there as a permanent resident. "Immigrant" is used to describe coming to a new country—for example, "she immigrated to the United States."

Industrialization:

The historic change from a farm-based economy to an economic system based on the manufacturing of goods and the distribution of services on an organized and mass-produced basis.

Migration:

To move from one place to another, not necessarily across national borders.

Multiculturalism:

A view of the social world that embraces, or takes into account, the diversity of people and their cultures within the society.

Nationalism:

A movement that advocates national independence, or the creation of self-governed nations and elimination of rule by foreigners.

Nativism:

In the United States, a set of beliefs that centers around favoring the interests of people who are native-born to a country (though generally not concerning Native Americans) as opposed to its immigrants.

Naturalization:

The process of becoming a citizen.

Persecution:

Abusive and oppressive treatment.

Quota:

An assigned proportion.

Refugee:

The Refugee Act of 1980 defines a refugee as a person who has left the country in which he or she last lived and is unable to return to that country "because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion." Once a person is determined to be a refugee in the United States, he or she is entitled to federal assistance in settling into a home and finding a job, and in getting English-language training, temporary cash loans, and necessary medical services.

Reincarnation:

Rebirth of the soul in a new body.

Visa:

The official endorsement on a passport showing that a person may legally enter the country.

other countries defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). The Chinese Exclusion Act, which had been passed in 1882 and prohibited most Chinese laborers from entering the country, was repealed in 1943, but immigration was still limited to one hundred people a year for most Asian countries. In 1946, the Luce-Celler Bill granted small immigration quotas and naturalization rights to Asian Indians and Filipinos. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 officially ended the exclusion policies that had been directed at Asians in the past, but still gave 85 percent of the total annual immigration quota to northern and western Europe. This left most Asian countries with a quota of only one hundred people permitted to immigrate. The 1952 act removed all bans on the naturalization of foreign-born Asians; it also increased the number of nonquota immigrants (immigrants who were not counted as part of the annual quota), including immediate relatives of citizens and permanent residents.

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, U.S. immigration policy was becoming increasingly incompatible with the changing attitudes toward race at home and the country's reputation as a leader abroad. Urged by Presidents John F. Kennedy (1917–1963; served 1961–63) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973; served 1963–69), Congress enacted a wide-ranging immigration policy reform. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Celler Act, abolished the national origins quota system and ended discriminatory policies against immigration from Asian nations. It raised the total number of people allowed to immigrate each year to 290,000, with 170,000 visas (documents allowing a person to legally enter the country) available altogether for countries in the Eastern Hemisphere and no limit for any one country. Applicants were to be approved on a first-come, first-served basis. The act gave special preference to the family members of people already in the country and to people who had professional skills that were in need in the United States. The act dramatically changed U.S. immigration. From only 3 percent of the total of immigrants in 1960, Asians made up 34 percent of all immigrants to the United States in 1975. Immigration by Asian Indians rose from three hundred in 1965 to fourteen thousand in 1975; Korean immigration grew more than tenfold in the next three decades. The Immigration Act of 1965 also set the stage for the wave of immigration from Southeast Asia that would begin ten years later.

Asian Indian immigration

The Republic of India, Asia's second-largest country after China, fills the major part of the South Asian subcontinent (which it shares with Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh). The British began trading in India in the sixteenth century and came to dominate the nation. In 1859 British Queen Victoria (1819–1901) was proclaimed Empress of India. In the succeeding decades, India made some significant economic and political advances, but a growing cultural and political gap developed between the Indians and the British. A modern Indian nationalism (referring to a movement that advocates national independence, or the creation of self-governed nations and the elimination of rule by foreigners) grew strong in the early twentieth century. Since the eighteenth century, it is estimated that approximately eighteen million people from India have settled in different parts of the world outside their homeland. An initially small but later

rapidly growing portion came to the United States, and Asian Indians continue to immigrate here in large numbers today.

First wave

Before the Immigration Act of 1965, there were several thousand Asian Indians living in the United States. Most had arrived in the country after 1905. Between 1899 and

1913, around seven thousand Asian Indians immigrated to the United States. The first immigrants were small farmers, mostly Sikhs from Punjab. Punjab is a fertile state in the northwest plains of India. Most people in Punjab were farmers, but overpopulation had made it impossible for everyone there to have a plot of land to farm. Some people emigrated to seek a better life. Sikhism is a religion that developed in Punjab. Founded by Nanak (1469–1538) at the end of the fifteenth century, it is a combination of aspects of Hinduism and Islam. Some of the immigrants from Punjab tried to settle throughout Washington, Oregon, and California, where many worked on the railroad, in lumber mills, and in agriculture. The Punjab immigrants who came to the United States generally hoped to acquire land to farm, but due to lack of funds and anti-Asian discrimination, many became day laborers instead. The majority settled in the Imperial Valley of southern California, near the Mexican border, or in northern California in the Sacramento Valley.

The early Asian Indian immigrants were called "Hindus" by Americans, even though very few of them were believers in the Hindu religion. The majority were Sikhs and at least one-third were Muslims. Like Chinese and Japanese workers at the turn of the century, Asian Indians were often viewed by other American workers as unwanted competition in the labor market, and some were treated very abusively. One interesting difference in the way Asian Indians were viewed in the United States stemmed from the fact that they were Caucasian. The 1790 Naturalization Act specified that only "white persons" were eligible for naturalized citizenship. In 1922 the Supreme Court found that Caucasians were "white persons," so it seemed that Asian Indians could become naturalized citizens. In 1923, though, the Supreme Court ruled that Asian Indians could not become naturalized citizens because to the "common man," the term "white person" meant someone whose ancestry was in northern or western Europe.

American hostility toward the Asian Indians grew and became part of the general anti-Asian outcry before World War I (1914–18), when newspapers, nativist organizations (groups favoring the interests of people who are native-born to a country), and politicians all were in an uproar about the "Yellow Peril," the supposed invasion of the United States by Asian immigrants. Some 3,453 Asian Indians were denied entry into the United States between 1908 and 1928 due to exclusionist policies. Very few women from India were among these early immigrants, and after 1917 even women whose husbands were already in the United States were prohibited entry. Asian Indian men were frequently prohibited from marrying European American women by local or state laws. Some Asian Indian men married Mexican women, while others, feeling isolated and alone in an unfriendly land, returned to India. By 1940, the U.S. Census reported the Asian Indian population had decreased to 2,405. Those who had stayed had assimilated (adapted and blended in with the mainstream culture) well enough to raise their economic status, but without immigration from India, the population dwindled to 1,500 by 1946.

As the immigration laws were relaxed during the period between World War II and 1965, six thousand more Asian Indians immigrated to the United States. India became an independent, democratic nation in 1950.

Second wave

The second wave of immigration began with the new immigration laws of 1965 and continues today. The second-wave Asian Indians are very different from the first. They are equally divided between men and women and are mostly professionals with advanced degrees. Most recent Indian immigrants come from modern urban areas and prefer to live in cities. They and Korean Americans are the only Asian American groups not concentrated on the West Coast.

Asian Indian American population and culture

The Asian Indian American community experienced explosive growth after 1965, increasing from roughly 50,000 to nearly 1.9 million in 2000. Asian Indians have settled all over the country, but New York City; San Jose, California; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; and Fremont, California, have the largest Asian Indian populations.

Asian Indians are one of the United States' fastest growing ethnic groups and they are also one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country. For the most part, Asian Indians emigrated because of widespread unemployment and lack of opportunity in their home country. As the community established itself, many immigrants brought their families to the United States. While the income of the Asian Indian population is generally very high, there is also a group of newly arriving immigrants who live below the poverty level.

Asian Indian Americans have a wide variety of occupational skills. Many have purchased businesses such as restaurants and motels. In fact, Asian Indian Americans accounted in the mid-1990s for approximately 20 percent of U.S. motel and hotel managers. Many Asian Indian entrepreneurs (people who start up their own businesses) build up businesses that require large staffs of low-paid workers, such as the newsstand business. The low-paid positions are often filled by incoming Asian Indians, who get their start in the country working for established Asian Indian Americans. Often the newly arriving immigrants find a place to live near people they knew from the old country. This sets up a chain migration, in which the people who are already

here bring over family and friends, help them find work, and get them set up, creating an Asian Indian enclave (distinct social groups existing within a foreign territory) or neighborhood.

Many Asian Indians come to the United States on H1-B temporary work visas, also commonly referred to as the "high-tech visa" because so many high-tech firms are bringing skilled technological professionals in from other countries. The U.S. economy grew very rapidly during the 1990s and there were not enough engineers, mathematicians, or other technicians to fill all the available positions. Thus, one of the largest Asian Indian communities in the United States is in Fremont, California, part of Silicon Valley, an epicenter for technological advances. Asian Indians who have come here on temporary visas are well educated and usually speak English fluently before arriving. They generally make a very good income in the United States. They are not citizens, and a good portion of them will return to India, but in the mean-time they bring Indian culture to the Asian Indian Americans who have been in the country for some time.

Education levels of Asian Indian Americans are quite high. In 1990, 89 percent of Asian Indian males and 79 percent of females had a high school diploma. Some 65.7 percent of males and 48.7 percent of females had college degrees.

In India, there are more than three hundred languages and dialects spoken. The national language is Hindi and it is spoken by over 40 percent of the population. Other languages spoken are Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, Oriya, Kannada, Tamil, and Malayalam. Many Indians speak English as a second language and a large portion of immigrants from India, who are generally quite well educated, have a good command of English before arriving.

Religion

Hinduism is the primary religion of the Indian people. Others practice Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity, or Islam. Based upon ancient mythology, Hinduism has evolved over thousands of years. Unlike Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, Hinduism has no founder and its exact history is not known. It has several books of sacred writings, although none of them are considered to be definitive of the beliefs common to all Hindus. The oldest and most sacred of Hindu writings are the Vedas, a Sanskrit word meaning "knowledge" or "sacred teaching." These works, which Hindus consider to have been divinely revealed, are vastly longer than the holy scriptures of Western religions—six times the length of the Old and New Testaments together. They are also centuries older; by most estimates they were written by 1500b.c.e.

Hinduism also has a pantheon (a group of recognized gods) of hundreds of gods, which the faithful worship in a variety of ways. The three most important gods—referred to as the Hindu trinity—are Brahma, the creator of the universe; Shiva, the destroyer of the universe; and Vishnu, the preserver of the universe.

One of the basic tenets (beliefs) of Hinduism is the immortality of the soul and its reincarnation (rebirth of the soul in a new body) after the death of the physical body. Hindus believe that the soul is on a timeless journey toward perfection, and that during each lifetime the soul is afforded the opportunity to live in accordance with spiritual principles. Those who choose to reject Hindu principles are returned to life in an inferior life form after their death, whereas those who live a pure life are reborn into a higher or an improved life form. These reincarnations continue until the soul achieves perfection and enters a new realm of existence called moksha, after which it is united with Brahman, the underlying force in the universe. Hinduism teaches the existence of a grand, harmonic interdependence among all living things. It is a view of life in which human action has a higher meaning than human beings can understand in their lifetimes. For Hindus, the practice of their religion promises greater understanding of the nature of reality and, ultimately, communion with Brahman.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Indian religious movements had an impact on American culture. Hinduism came to the United States in the late nineteenth century with Hindu missionaries called swamis. Swami Vivekanada (1863–1902) came from India in 1893 and founded the Vedanta Society. In 1920 Swami Yogananada (1893–1952) founded the Togoda Satsanaga Society in Los Angeles. These societies drew in thousands of white, Protestant, mainly middle-class Americans, introducing to them the Hindu philosophy and the practice of yoga. Yoga is an ancient practice that benefits the body, mind, and spirit by teaching self-control through a series of exercises as well as through breathing, relaxation, and meditation techniques.

Dress

The most common traditional dress for Asian Indian women is the sari (sometimes spelled saree), which consists of six yards of fabric draped or pleated around the waist and hung over a long petticoat with the end gathered at one shoulder. A choli, or matching, tight-fitting blouse, is worn underneath.

Traditional dress varies by region in India. Immigrants to the United States who choose traditional dress will reflect the region from which they came. Women from Punjab wear a kurta, or long chemise or dress, over baggy trousers called salwar, or tight trousers gathered in pleats at the ankles called churidar. A dopatta, or matching scarf, is draped over the shoulders. In Rajasthan women wear a ghaghra, or flared skirt, a choli, and a long scarf.

Men's traditional dress is a long robe called a sherwani, worn over tight-fitting churidars. Sometimes a kurta is worn over pants with a vest or over a dhoti, several yards of fabric draped into trousers around the legs.

Mira Nair, Film Director

Mira Nair was born in 1957 and grew up in comfortable surroundings in Bhubaneswar, a small town in eastern India. Her first passion was theater. After graduating from an Irish Catholic missionary school in Simia, India, she attended Delhi University for one year, where she acted with an amateur theater group performing the works of William Shakespeare (1564–1616). In 1976 Harvard University offered Nair a full scholarship. She grabbed the opportunity to travel to the United States. At Harvard she discovered a love of film, specifically documentaries. She made her first documentary, Jama Masjid Street Journal, as a student project at Harvard in 1979. It explored the lives of a traditional Muslim community in Old Delhi. Her 1982 documentary, So Far from India, relates the story of an Indian subway newsstand worker in Manhattan who returns to his wife in India only to find that they have grown apart. In India Cabaret, made in 1985, Nair illustrated the hard lives of women dancers working in a Bombay nightclub. The film won best documentary prizes at the American Film Festival and the Global Village Film Festival. Nair's 1987 film, Children of a Desired Sex, caused an uproar; it directly confronted the Indian culture's preference for boys over girls. (In India, there is an age-old tradition of son preference, which has become more intense in modern times because of the dowry system—in which a large payment is made to the family of the groom by the bride's family. Dowries are a source of income for the groom's family but a terrible burden for many brides' families.)

Nair's first feature film, Salaam Bombay!, was about homeless children living on the streets of Bombay. Made on a small budget, the film was a commercial and critical success. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1988; it won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and twenty-five other international awards. Nair made Mississippi Masala in 1992. The word masala refers to the mix of spices used in Indian cooking. The film dealt with the lives of Indians who were forced to leave their homes in Uganda, in eastern Africa, when dictator Idi Amin (c. 1925–2003) expelled Asians from the country in 1972. Many moved to the United States, settling in Mississippi and buying motels. The film, starring Denzel Washington (1954–) and Sarita Choudhury (1966–), centers around an interracial love story; Denzel is African American and Sarita is Asian Indian. It won three awards at the Venice Film Festival. Subsequent films include The Perez Family (with Marisa Tomei [1964–], Anjelica Huston [1951–], Alfred Molina [1953–], and Chazz Palminteri [1952–]), about an exiled Cuban family in Miami, and the sensuous Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, which Nair directed and cowrote. My Own Country (1998), the story of an immigrant doctor treating Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), was named the best fiction feature for 1998 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Her 1999 documentary The Laughing Club of India also won prestigious awards.

Nair's 2000 film Monsoon Wedding received critical acclaim and was very popular with the American public as well. The film depicted a Punjabi wedding—and the family involved—in intimate detail. The family is upper middle class and urban, modern and yet quite traditional too. Nair won the prestigious Golden Lion award at the 2001 Venice Film Festival. She was the first Indian and the first woman to win the award. She also won a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign language film. As she accepted the award, she honored the Indian cinema (as quoted in an India Express Bureau press release): "I am very pleased, especially tonight for India. We have a powerful cinema that is known in one half of the world and not in the other half. And this award comes from the other half of the world. It's a matter of great pride and honor to us."

Nair's next film, made for the cable channel HBO, was Hysterical Blindness, starring Uma Thurman (1970–), Juliette Lewis (1973–), and Gena Rowlands (1930–). Nair teaches at Columbia University.

In the Sikh community, a turban is worn along with a steel bangle around the wrist, a comb in uncut hair, a dagger (kirpan), and a pair of shorts. Today, Western dress is common among most Asian Indian men and many Asian Indian women in both the United States and India.

Korean Americans

In little more than one hundred years, the Korean American community has grown from a small group of political exiles and immigrant laborers in Hawaii and California to become one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. According to the 2000 Census, Americans identifying themselves as of Korean descent numbered 1,228,427. There were only about 45,000 Korean Americans in 1965.

The first Koreans arrived in the United States in the early 1900s. A total of 7,226 Korean exiles and laborers immigrated between January 1903 and July 1907. Among these exiles were leaders of a failed attempt to overthrow the Japanese, who had annexed and taken control of their nation. They included So Chae-pil (1866–1951), who later changed his name to Philip Jaisohn and became the first Korean American medical doctor; Ahn Chang-ho (1878–1938); Park Yong-man (1881–1928); and Syngman Rhee (1875–1965). These four became leaders of the Korean American community and helped create a Korean national independence movement in the United States.

Most of the early immigrants from Korea, however, were young, male agricultural laborers. They were recruited to work on the sugarcane plantations of Hawaii after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts in the late 1800s, barring any more Chinese workers from entering the United States. Like other Asian immigrants before them, the Koreans found life on the plantations extremely difficult. Many Korean laborers soon left the plantations and began small businesses of their own. About two thousand moved to California and started up small farms or retail stores there.

The first wave of Korean immigration included over twelve hundred women and children, so a sizeable number of families were among the early Korean American population. However, single men still outnumbered single women by a significant margin, leaving many unattached men with no prospects for marriage or family. Between 1910 and 1924, some eleven hundred Korean "picture brides" arrived in the United States to marry Korean workers. The brides and grooms had been introduced to each other through letters and photographs (some of which grossly misrepresented the truth). The women were often better educated than the men. By establishing families and adding their education to the mix, these women helped stabilize and energize the Korean American community.

Korean Americans suffered from the discrimination leveled at all Asian Americans in the early to mid-twentieth century. Antimiscegenation laws (laws put in place by several states prohibiting marriage between races, usually between whites and any other race) prevented them from marrying European Americans, and the Alien Land Law of 1913 barred them from owning land. In the outcry against the "Yellow Peril" and the supposed invasion of the United States by Asians, European Americans refused to admit Korean Americans to schools, give them jobs, or allow them to live in certain neighborhoods. Many Korean and other Asian Americans were injured and even killed by racially motivated violence, motivated mainly because of differences in physical appearance and cultural differences.

Despite sometimes brutal prejudice, however, Korean Americans continued to survive as a community. They also continued to pour their energies into the Korean nationalist movement until Korea won its independence from Japan in 1945. Syngman Rhee then returned to American-occupied Korea. With the help of the United States, Rhee was elected president of the southern part of the Korea, which would become the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in 1948. The northern part of Korea, which had been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, elected its own leader, Kim Il Sung (1912–1994). In 1950 the Korean War began, pitting North against South Korea. The Chinese fought on the side of North Korea and the United States fought on the side of South Korea. The war lasted until 1953, when a truce stopped the armed conflict but left the nation divided into two hostile countries.

The second wave of Korean immigration to the United States occurred after the Korean War in the early 1950s.U.S. military personnel brought back Korean women they had married while stationed in Korea, and many U.S. families adopted Korean war orphans. Between 1951 and 1964, some sixty-five hundred Korean women ("war brides") and sixtythree hundred adopted Korean children entered the country. Korean students also began to come in greater numbers to study at American universities, and Korean doctors arrived to further their medical training.

The latest wave of Korean immigration to the United States began after Congress passed the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which allowed entire families to immigrate at once, and granted Korean students and professionals the right to apply for U.S. citizenship. These new citizens, along with the Korean wives of U.S. military personnel (who automatically became U.S. citizens upon their marriage), then applied for permanent residency status for their parents, siblings, spouses, and children. Most of the U.S. immigrants from Korea since 1970 have been close relatives of already established Korean American citizens or permanent residents.

Korean American population and culture

The 2000 U.S. Census estimated the Korean American population at 1,228,427. Korean Americans live in communities across the United States, with the majority in California. The states of New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington also have significant Korean American communities. Although "Koreatowns" developed in Los Angeles and other large cities, for the most part Korean Americans have not settled in ethnic enclaves or neighborhoods but rather are scattered throughout U.S. cities, towns, and villages. In fact, Korean Americans are the most widely dispersed of any Asian American population.

In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea transformed into an industrial economy, causing the Korean population to shift from the countryside to the cities. This urbanization, combined with a population boom, resulted in job shortages for college-educated workers. The lack of jobs drove many South Koreans to emigrate, and some came to the United States. The immigrants were generally educated and middle class.

Many Korean Americans, even those who have lived in the United States for more than one or two generations, continue to speak Korean at home and with other Korean Americans. The same language is spoken throughout North and South Korea (although accents differ from region to region), making it possible for all Korean-speaking Korean Americans to understand one another. A very simple phonetic alphabet was created in the fifteenth century to replace an extremely complicated set of ideographs (pictures or symbols that represent things or ideas, rather than words) that had been in use. The new alphabet allowed nearly all Korean speakers to become literate. Koreans today continue to have one of the highest literacy rates in the world, at over 95 percent.

Education has long been valued in Korea, and Korean Americans, continuing in this tradition, have generally excelled in the U.S. educational systems. Koreans, along with Asian Indians and the Chinese, have a very high rate of attaining college degrees, at 61.8 percent, compared with the national rate of 31 percent.

Korean names are usually made up of three syllables: the first is the family name, the second is the generational name, and the last is the personal name (sometimes the order of the generational and personal names is reversed). Because family names customarily come last in the United States, Korean Americans are often addressed incorrectly. Even when they reverse the traditional order of their names to conform to American conventions, they are often met with confusion because their family names resemble common American personal names (such as "Kim" and "Lee," two of the most common Korean family names).

Religion

For centuries, Koreans, like their neighbors, the Chinese, followed the teachings of Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479b.c.e.). Although mainly Buddhist today, South Korea remains one of the most Confucian of all Asian countries. Korean Confucianism emphasizes family responsibility and interdependence, along with respect for one's elders. It also places a high value on hierarchies (levels) of authority, which are also expressed in the structures of most Korean American organizations and businesses. Many Korean Americans have become Christian (particularly Protestant), yet they are still strongly influenced by traditional Confucian beliefs.

About 75 percent of Korean American families are affiliated with a Christian church, and some 65 percent attend services regularly. Churches serve many purposes, both sacred and secular (non-religious), in Korean American communities. For example, information regarding housing and employment opportunities is shared; English language classes are offered to foreign-born Korean Americans; Korean language classes are available for those born in America; and social events provide a chance for widely dispersed Korean Americans to come together as a community. In the first half of the twentieth century, churches were the headquarters for the Korean national independence movement. Perhaps most importantly, churches have served as a replacement for the traditional extended family (a household that includes not just parents and children but also other relatives, such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, or cousins) that was often lost in the move from Korea to the United States.

Work and money

The majority of Korean immigrants are college educated and come from the middle or upper classes. Because of language difficulties and racial discrimination, many Korean immigrants have trouble getting professional jobs in accordance with their skills and education. Many have been forced to take on blue-collar jobs (less skilled wage earning jobs). Still others have become owners of small businesses such as restaurants, liquor stores, and markets. About one-third of all Korean Americans who are employed own their own businesses. Korean-owned businesses in the early twenty-first century employed more than 333,000 people, generating sales and receipts of over forty-six billion dollars. Many of these small business owners were college graduates, and few of them had been business owners in Korea.

When Italian, Jewish, and Irish business owners in the inner cities began selling their shops to move to the suburbs during the 1970s and 1980s, Korean Americans took advantage of the opportunities and bought many of the businesses. In New York City and in Los Angeles, for example, Korean immigrants bought run-down corner stores. They cleaned them up and many began to sell fresh fruits and vegetables. In the years between 1970 and 1980 six hundred Korean produce markets opened in New York City and prospered there.

Racial tensions, crime, and inner-city poverty have sometimes made life difficult for the new Korean American business owners. Particularly devastating were the Los Angeles riots that erupted in 1992 following the acquittal of four white police officers charged with the beating of African American motorist Rodney King. Residents of ethnically diverse South Central Los Angeles took their anger about the acquittal to the streets in three days of mayhem, in which 53 people were killed, 2,383 injured, and 17,000 arrested. Damages to city and federal property, stores, and homes totaled almost $1 billion. There had been tension between African Americans and Korean Americans in Los Angeles prior to the riots for a variety of different reasons, most probably based on misunderstandings due to cultural differences. The first stores to go up in the riot's flames were swapmeets, owned primarily by Korean and Chinese Americans. Specific buildings and stores owned by Asian Americans were targeted by looters. In the violence and confusion, about twenty-three hundred Korean American businesses were looted or burned. Korean American business owners suffered some $500 million in damage (half of the total estimated damage losses in Los Angeles County). Rebuilding after the riots was slow and difficult.

Korean Americans are strongly community oriented and have turned to their extended families, churches, and community organizations for support in crises like the Los Angeles riots. They have also turned to a centuries-old Korean organization called the kye, a rotating credit system that also provides emotional support and friendship to its members. A kye consists of anywhere between twelve and fifty members who each contribute an agreed-upon amount (anywhere from less than a hundred dollars to several thousand dollars) every month; a different member receives the pot each month until each member has had a turn. Then the kye disbands. This is an informal type of loan. Kyes have provided the means for many Korean Americans to open businesses, finance higher education, and survive sudden unexpected crises. For Korean Americans with small businesses in Los Angeles during the 1992 riots, kyes offered some financial and emotional security.

Korean Americans have divided themselves up along generational lines: the il-se, or first generation of adult immigrants; the il-jom-o-se, or one-point-five (1.5) generation, consisting of the il-se's foreign-born children; and the i-se, or second generation, made up of those born subsequently in the United States. Generation gaps exist between each of these groups, with the il-se embedded in traditional Korean ways, the i-se growing up thoroughly American, and the iljom-o-se bridging the two worlds.

Vietnamese Americans

Vietnamese Americans, numbering about 1,223,736 in 2000, are the fifth largest Asian American population. Located south of China on the Indochina peninsula, Vietnam is a predominantly agricultural country with a troubled history of occupation and domination by foreign powers.

Occupied for over a thousand years by the Chinese (111b.c.e.–939c.e.), Vietnam was then ruled independently by eight different dynasties (a dynasty is a succession of rulers from the same family) until 1883. Vietnam endured seventy years of French colonial rule (1883–1945) followed by thirty years of continuous warfare (1945–75). During this period, the communist North Vietnamese fought a guerrilla war against the anticommunist South Vietnamese to reunify the country, which had been divided along the seventeenth parallel in 1954. (A guerrilla is a person, not in the army, who fights independently or with a small unit, usually by harassing and sabotaging the enemy.) The United States entered the war in the early 1960s in an attempt to prevent a communist victory. After that, involvement of American troops grew until Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, fell to the communist North on April 30, 1975. On that day at least sixty-five thousand South Vietnamese fled the country.

There had not been many Vietnamese people living in the United States before 1975—less than four thousand in 1970. After the governments of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell to communists in 1975, the first wave of 130,000 Vietnamese refugees escaped their country by helicopter, plane, and boat. Later waves of Vietnamese fled the country on traumatic ocean journeys in leaky, overcrowded boats, risking injury, robbery, rape, and death from the pirates who preyed on them. A large number of these refugees made their way to the United States.

The first wave of refugees from Vietnam tended to be well educated and wealthy; many were high-ranking military

officers and government officials. As they waited to enter the United States, the American public became uneasy about a new influx of Vietnamese refugees. President Gerald Ford (1913–; served 1974–77), believing that the United States had a responsibility to help the Vietnamese people, passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act in 1975. This gave two hundred thousand Vietnamese refugees a special status and permission to enter the United States. The refugees were moved to resettlement camps in the United States where their papers were processed and they were given English language classes. In order to prevent the refugees from clustering in large numbers in just a few regions, the bill provided that they be scattered throughout the country. Private organizations matched each of them with a sponsor who would help them resettle in his or her own community. This measure was taken to calm the fears of Americans that thousands of immigrants would overwhelm their community, but it was harmful to the Vietnamese, who, like all recent immigrants, sought the support and comfort of people from their homeland. Although most of these first refugees could only find low-paying jobs and many ended up on welfare, the U.S. government planned to phase out its aid program by 1977.

However, the situation in Vietnam got worse. Although defeated in the war, the south proved resistant to the communist government's efforts to end private enterprise (business activities that are not subject to government ownership or control). When the regime attempted to destroy the remnants of capitalism and private farming in the south in 1978, thousands fled, and the economy entered a period of severe crisis. Some eighty-five thousand Vietnamese climbed aboard overcrowded, flimsy boats and attempted to cross the sea to safety. These desperate folk came to be known as the "boat people." Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 to admit more Vietnamese refugees. In this second wave of Vietnamese immigration, ninety-five thousand refugees entered the United States in 1980 and eighty-six thousand in 1981. Most of these refugees were poorly educated farmers and fishers who had a difficult time adapting to life in the industrialized United States.

The Orderly Departure Program was put into effect in 1982 to reduce the number of people risking their lives in flimsy boats to escape Vietnam by allowing legal immigration and providing funding for the relocation process. Under this new program, sixty-six thousand more Vietnamese entered the United States between 1983 and 1991. In 1987 Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act to help Amerasian teenagers (the children of Vietnamese women and American military men) and their families immigrate to the United States. Between 1981 and 2000, the United States accepted 531,310 Vietnamese refugees. As refugees, they have one of the highest rates of naturalization; many are citizens.

Vietnamese American population and culture

The majority, or almost 40 percent, of Vietnamese Americans live in California; 12 percent live in Texas. The largest population of Vietnamese found outside of Vietnam is in Orange Country, California, with a population of 125,548 Vietnamese Americans. "Little Saigon" in Orange County is the center of the Vietnamese American community. There are also sizeable groups in Pennsylvania, Florida, Washington, Illinois, New York, and Louisiana. The attempts by the government to spread the Vietnamese population throughout the country largely failed. Family and kinship groups are very important to traditional Vietnamese, so they began a secondary migration within the country to rejoin their families. They also moved from smaller towns and rural areas to cities where they would have better access to jobs and community and government services. Many also moved to warmer climates.

The Vietnamese language differs from English in fundamental ways, making the shift from Vietnamese to English extremely difficult. American-born Vietnamese Americans, who have grown up speaking English, and those who came to the United States as small children, usually speak both languages with little difficulty. Older foreign-born Vietnamese Americans, however, still speak Vietnamese almost exclusively at home and among friends and family and struggle to speak English when necessary in non-Vietnamese society. Vietnamese Americans have not been in the United States long enough to have a significant population of third-generation immigrants (children born to American-born Vietnamese) who might begin to lose their fluency in Vietnamese. In the early twenty-first century, more than one million Vietnamese Americans speak Vietnamese at home. It has become the seventh most spoken language in the United States.

Religion

Although Roman Catholics make up only 10 percent of the population of Vietnam, about 29 to 40 percent of Vietnamese Americans are Catholic. This is due both to the high percentage of Roman Catholics among the first wave of refugees and to the involvement of Roman Catholic organizations in refugee resettlement in the United States. Many Vietnamese refugees, in gratitude to their Roman Catholic U.S. sponsors, at least nominally (in name or form only) converted to Roman Catholicism. There are now about one hundred Vietnamese American Catholic communities and twenty-two official parishes, and over eight hundred Vietnamese American priests and nuns in the United States. The largest parish is in New Orleans, Louisiana, with some ten thousand parishioners.

Most Vietnamese Americans, however, are Buddhists of the "Northern School," also known as Mahayana Buddhists, which preaches the importance of reaching nirvana (eternal bliss) with the help of Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings). In 1991 there were eighty Vietnamese Buddhist temples in the United States. Other religions are also represented among Vietnamese Americans, including Confucianism (considered a philosophy rather than a religion by some), Taoism (a Chinese mystical philosophy), Cao-Dai (a combination of Eastern belief systems), and Hoa-Hao (a meditative sect originating in the Mekong Delta in 1939). A small minority of Vietnamese Americans are either Muslim or Protestant.

Holiday

The most important holiday for Vietnamese Americans is Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, a type of community-wide birthday party. Occurring sometime between mid-January and mid-February (based on the Chinese lunar calendar), it is a combination New Year, spring, family, and national festival. Traditionally, Tet lasts for seven days, but most Vietnamese Americans celebrate only the first three. Other elements of Tet include the payment of debts, forgiveness of past wrongs, and vows of personal improvement.

Work

First-wave Vietnamese Americans, who were generally well educated and had job skills relevant to the industrialized American work world, now enjoy living conditions comparable to or better than the national average. Second-wave refugees, however, have had a more difficult time succeeding in the United States. With less formal schooling and few relevant job skills, many second-wave refugees have either been stuck in low-paying blue-collar jobs or remain unemployed. At least half of Vietnamese American families who arrived in the United States after 1976 live below the poverty line.

Vietnamese Americans have found the most employment success in the area of small business ownership. Most are family-run businesses and serve primarily Vietnamese American customers. Typical Vietnamese American businesses include restaurants, specialty grocery stores, laundries and

tailor shops, convenience stores, beauty salons, car repair garages, and real estate offices. In 1986 there were at least 1,000 Vietnamese American businesses in Los Angeles alone. The U.S. Census Bureau counted a total of 25,671 Vietnamese American businesses throughout the country in 1987, with combined receipts equaling $1.36 billion.

Young Vietnamese Americans, like other Asian American students, tend to be high achievers at school. Despite language and cultural barriers, they work hard and are eager to acquire the skills necessary to succeed in their American homeland. Many adult Vietnamese Americans attend adult education classes for English language and job skills training. Vietnamese Americans often describe themselves with the traditional Vietnamese phrase tran can cu, which expresses a combination of hard work, persistence, ambition, and patience.

Traditionally, the family is the center of Vietnamese culture, and Vietnamese Americans tend to be very family oriented. Many send financial support to those they left behind in Vietnam and sponsor their relatives to join them in the United States whenever possible. Extended families often live together; in 1985, 55 percent of Vietnamese American households consisted of multiple generations of extended kin.

Vietnamese Americans suffer from the same problem that most new immigrant communities face: the tension between foreign-born elders who continue to hold to traditional values and American-born young people who have been assimilated to American values. There is also some tension between first-wave and second-wave Vietnamese Americans. The more educated and successful first-wave refugees sometimes look down upon second-wave refugees who have not been as successful. Second-wave refugees, on the other hand, resent the privilege and snobbery of the first-wave refugees. For the most part, this tension is a continuation of class conflicts in Vietnam between the educated elite (the first wave of refugees) and less educated laborers (the second wave).

After fighting a long and bloody battle with the communists in Vietnam, many Vietnamese Americans remain extremely anticommunist. In fact, at one time Vietnamese Americans considered it disloyal to their former country to belong to the Democratic Party, which seemed to them to lean too far toward communism. Most have modified these views but strong feelings still erupt in the community. There was trouble in 1999, for example, in the Little Saigon area of Orange County when a store owner displayed a Vietnamese communist flag and a picture of the former president of communist North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969). This triggered a huge protest, involving fifty thousand Vietnamese Americans demonstrating in the streets of Little Saigon.

Cambodian Americans

For Cambodians, the end of the Vietnam War marked the beginning of a nightmarish period. With the reversal of U.S. policy in Vietnam, support for the Khmer Republic began to taper off, and by the start of 1975, the American-supported Cambodian government was plunged into a struggle for survival. Cambodian leader Lon Nol (1913–1985) and his government fell in 1975 to the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerilla revolutionary group. The Khmer Rouge was an extremely violent and brutal group that aimed to return Cambodia (a country of southeast Asia) to the farming country it had been before the colonial powers had introduced trade and industry. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot (1925–1998) instituted a mass relocation of the population from the cities to the countryside. What followed was a genocidal program (the systematic killing of a racial, ethnic, or cultural group of people) that targeted educated and professional Cambodians and anyone identified with the Americans. In the "killing fields," where executions took place outside of prison camps, and throughout the country, the death toll ran into the millions.

Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1979, and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians took advantage of the situation to flee to Thailand. When American journalists sent filmed reports of starving Cambodian refugees back to the United States and other countries in the West, Americans and Europeans responded by opening their doors to these immigrants. Many Cambodian refugees eventually immigrated to the United States.

Most Cambodians arrived in the United States in the early 1980s. Voluntary resettlement agencies, many affiliated with churches, were set up to assist the refugees in finding sponsors to help them adjust to life in their new country. While only 300 Cambodians arrived in the United States in 1977, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, in 1980 about 16,000 arrived, and in 1981 there were 27,100 more. The high rate of immigration to the United States lasted until 1986 and then began to dwindle. Improvements in the political situation in Cambodia in the early 1990s reduced the number of emigrants significantly.

The Cambodian American population

The U.S. Census Bureau reported that there were 206,052 Cambodian Americans in 2000, but this figure may be low because many Cambodian Americans may not have responded to the census, being so new to the country and its ways. Most researchers believe the figure is closer to 300,000. Nearly half of all Cambodian Americans live in California, particularly in Long Beach. Los Angeles also has a large Cambodian American population, although the second-largest Cambodian American population in California is in Stockton. Massachusetts is also the home of a large number of Cambodian Americans, about half of whom live in the city of Lowell. Other states with large Cambodian American populations are Texas, Pennsylvania, and Washington.

Because they are such newcomers to the United States, many Cambodian American adults are not well assimilated into (blended in with) American society. Only about 20 percent of foreign-born Cambodian Americans had become naturalized U.S. citizens by the early 1990s. As a recent refugee population, Cambodian Americans are also very young (mostly the young people were the ones willing or able to tear themselves away from their homes and venture out on a very risky journey).

The Cambodian language, also called Khmer, is related to Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian languages. The Cambodian alphabet is based on that of ancient India, which is quite different from the Roman alphabet used to write English. Therefore, Cambodians have to learn not only a new language but also a new alphabet upon arriving in the United States. Typical greetings in Cambodian (spelled here phonetically) are Jum-ree-up soouh ("Good Day") and Sohm lee-uh haee ("Goodbye").

Most Cambodian Americans are poor, having so recently arrived in the United States as refugees. Most were farmers in Cambodia but have settled in cities in the United States. Lack of language skills, cultural understanding, and job skills creates high unemployment and low income. Those who do find jobs usually work in low-paying service and unskilled labor occupations. The unemployment rate for Cambodian Americans drops significantly with each year they reside in the United States. Some 40 percent of Cambodian American families were living below the poverty level in 2000 according to the U.S. Census.

Many Cambodian Americans lack formal education. In 1990 more than 50 percent of Cambodian American men had no more than a sixth-grade education, and 90 percent had not graduated from high school. Cambodian American women had even less schooling, with 66 percent at a sixth-grade level or less and 95 percent without a high-school diploma. Even those Cambodian Americans who were highly educated in Cambodia before coming to the United States find that their education is irrelevant to the American work world, and their lack of English language skills handicaps them further. Foreign-born Cambodian Americans with elite backgrounds in Cambodia often end up working as janitors or as other unskilled laborers in the United States.

Young Cambodian Americans do quite well in school, however, and are generally dedicated students. Only 6 percent of Cambodian Americans between the ages of sixteen and nineteen are high-school dropouts, as opposed to 10 percent of European Americans and 14 percent of African Americans between sixteen and nineteen years old.

Cambodian American culture

Nearly all Cambodian Americans are Buddhist, the traditional religion of Cambodia. Buddhism is divided into the "Northern School," or Mahayana Buddhism, and the "Southern School," or Theravada Buddhism. Cambodians follow the Southern School, which preaches the importance of reaching Nirvana (eternal bliss) through one's own efforts, rather than with the help of Bodhisattvas (enlightened beings), as is encouraged by the Northern School. This teaching is combined with the law of Karma (or Kam in the Cambodian language), which states that good deeds cause the soul to be reincarnated as a higher self.

So many Cambodian Americans lost family members to the wars in Cambodia that remaining and future family members are cherished. Cambodian American families tend to be large, and children are treated with tremendous affection. A high proportion of Cambodian American families are headed by single mothers, not because of divorce but because the fathers were killed in the Cambodian wars. Many of the Cambodian immigrants cannot forget the horrors of the events in Cambodia that they left behind. In Hartford, Connecticut, a therapy group operates specifically for survivors of the Khmer Rouge.

Although marriages in Cambodia are usually arranged by the parents, young Cambodian Americans more commonly choose their own partners. Weddings, a traditional rite of passage, are still celebrated in traditional ways by

Dith Pran and The Killing Fields

Dith Pran was born in 1942 in Siem Riep, Cambodia. Pran had a comfortable childhood and was educated in colonial schools in which he learned French and English. He finished high school in 1960 and went to work as an interpreter for aU.S. military assistance group then stationed in Cambodia as a part of America's long involvement in the war in Vietnam. The situation in Cambodia became extremely tense in the 1960s between communist and anticommunist factions. In 1970 the Khmer Rouge escalated its guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-backed government of Cambodia headed by Lon Nol. After an attack on Siem Riep, Pran's home-town, a group of Western journalists converged in the area. Pran helped them as an interpreter and guide. He was alarmed at the level of human suffering his people were enduring and he wanted to help spread the word to the West about what was happening. He soon moved with his wife and children to the capital of Phnom Penh, hoping to find work as a journalist.

In Phnom Penh, Pran was able to work with several news-gathering organizations. In 1972 he began working with New York Times correspondent Sydney Schanberg (1934–) as Schanberg's photographer and assistant. Pran and Schanberg became great friends as they worked at a hectic pace to cover the chaos that was sweeping across Cambodia. Their collaboration became almost constant and the bond of friendship between them became very strong. By 1975 it was clear that the Khmer Rouge would soon take control of Cambodia. When American officials announced their decision to leave the country, Pran was able to get his wife, Ser Moeum, and their four children out of Cambodia with the help of Schanberg. Six days later, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh. Pran and Schanberg stayed behind to cover events, hoping the takeover would be peaceful. It was not. After taking control of the city, the Khmer Rouge began to force the populace out of the capital and into the countryside; those who refused to go were killed.

Pran and Schanberg took refuge at the French Embassy with other Westerners and their Cambodian friends, but soon the Cambodians were ordered to leave the grounds. The Khmer Rouge had demanded that all Cambodian citizens be evacuated if the French wanted to get the Westerners out of the country. Schanberg and others most Cambodian Americans. The bride wears an elaborately decorated brocade dress called a kben, along with many bracelets, anklets, and necklaces. Grooms sometimes still wear the traditional baggy pants and jacket, but many have shifted to Western-style suits and tuxedos. The wedding ceremony consists of a procession, a feast with much toasting of tried to forge a passport for Pran, but the scheme failed; Pran was forced to leave the compound. Understanding the strong anti-Westernism of the Khmer Rouge, Pran donned the clothes of a Cambodian peasant and made his way back to his hometown where he was put to work in the rice fields.

Pran stayed in Siem Riep for the next two and half years, nearly dying of starvation as a famine set in and rations were reduced to one spoonful of rice a day. From 1974 until 1979, Pran lived in almost daily fear of death. He lost more than fifty family members to the Khmer Rouge, including both parents and brothers and a sister. In 1979 Pran decided it was time to escape. With a group of twelve men, he made the sixty-mile journey to the border with Thailand, all the while in fear of Khmer Rouge guerrillas, Vietnamese patrols, unmarked mines, and other hidden traps. After four days, they reached the border and then hid for another two weeks waiting for an opportunity to slip across into the refugee camps. When he finally arrived in Thailand, Pran found an American officer of the refugee camp and asked her to contact Schanberg at the New York Times. Their joyous reunion is the emotional highlight of the highly acclaimed 1984 film chronicling their experience, The Killing Fields.

Pran now lives in the United States where he works as a photographer for the New York Times and spends much of his time lecturing about conditions in Cambodia. In recent years, as the country has begun to achieve a relative degree of peacefulness with the help of the United Nations, Pran has returned to Cambodia to deliver school materials, blankets, and other supplies to orphaned children. He hopes to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice for war crimes at the World Court. In 1997 Pran and his wife, Kim DePaul, collaborated on a book called Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memories of Survivors, a compilation of first-person accounts of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge from the point of view of twenty-nine children.

Pran is still terrorized by memories of what he endured. In an October 25, 1991, interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said, "There is no doctor who can heal me. But I know a man like Pol Pot, he is even sicker than I am.… We both have the horror in our heads. In Cambodia, the killer and the victim have the same disease."

the new couple, rituals performed by a Buddhist monk, and gifts (often money) to the couple from the guests.

The most important Cambodian holiday is the New Year, or Chaul Chnam, and it is still celebrated by most Cambodian American communities. Usually occurring in mid-April, Chaul Chnam lasts for three days. Buddhists go to the temple and pray, meditate, and make plans for the coming year.

Traditional Cambodian literature is based on models from India and consists largely of poetry, proverbs, and fables. European literary forms, such as the novel, did not become popular in Cambodia until the 1970s. Since the takeover of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, many intellectuals have been killed, and almost no literature has been produced. Cambodian Americans have mostly used literature as a way to tell of the atrocities of the wars in Cambodia. Autobiography is the most prevalent Cambodian American literary form. Many Cambodian American writers have coauthors to help tell their stories in English, but others have become proficient enough in English to write their stories by themselves. One of these independent authors is Someth May, whose autobiography Cambodian Witness: The Autobiography of Someth May was published in 1986.

Other Southeast Asians

Other Southeast Asians include the Thais and Laotians. Thai immigration to the United States began during the Vietnam War, when U.S. armed forces arrived in Thailand. The majority of Thais who immigrated in the 1960s and early 1970s came as the wives of U.S. servicemen. In fact, in the 1970s the ratio of women to men among the approximately 5,000 Thai Americans was about three to one. Approximately 6,500 additional Thais immigrated to the United States each year during the 1980s, many of them coming with student or temporary-visitor visas, drawn by job and education opportunities. According to the 2000 census, there were about 150,000 Thai Americans, with the greatest concentration in California.

Laos was drawn into the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1975, when the communists took over Vietnam, communist forces also overthrew the Laotian government. Thousands of Laotians fled to the United States. Under the new refugee laws developed for the Vietnamese refugees, they were allowed to enter the country without going through the normal immigration processes. Between 1975 and 1981, 123,600 Laotian refugees entered the United States. In 2000, the population of Laotian Americans was around 198,000.

Among the Laotian refugees there were thousands of Hmong refugees. The Hmong, an ancient society, had lived as a separate people in Laos since the 1920s. During the Vietnam War, the Hmong fought with the South Vietnamese and the Americans. When the Laos government collapsed and the communists took over, many Hmong were killed, but some managed to escape to Thailand. By 1980 there were about 50,000 Hmong in the United States, and in 2000 there were more than 186,000 Hmong Americans.

For More Information

Books

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

Lehrer, Brian. The Korean Americans. New York: Chelsea House, 1996.

Portes, Alejandro, and Ruén G. Rumbaut. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 2nd ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1989.

Web Sites

"A Brief History of Indian Migration to America." American Immigration Law Foundation.http://www.ailf.org/awards/ahp_0203_essay.htm (accessed on March 3, 2004).

"Mira Nair: A Tale of International Fame." Zee Screen.http://entertainment.zeenext.com/articles.asp?aid=572 (accessed on March 3, 2004).

"Mira Nair Is First Indian to Win Golden Lion at Venice." India Express Bureau.http://www.apunkachoice.com/happenings/20010909-0.html (accessed on March 3, 2004).

"Pioneer Asian Indian Immigration to the Pacific Coast." University of California, Davis.http://www.lib.ucdavis.edu/punjab/index.html (accessed on March 3, 2004).