The Not-So-Promised Land?

Indochinese refugees fight suspicion and hostility

Shortly after 6 a.m. last Tuesday, World Airways Flight 031 touched down at California's Travis Air Force Base. A stream of 396 Indochinese refugees began to struggle down the stairway with their makeshift shopping-bag luggage, pausing at the bottom to fold their hands and bow formally to the flight attendants. After a briefing in Khmer and Lao and the processing of health forms, the refugees were hustled aboard buses and taken to a TraveLodge motel for introductory lessons on American life: how to operate light switches, how to use a toilet. Many stood on the motel's second-floor balcony and stared uncomprehendingly at the rush of traffic below. Others squatted on the pink sidewalk and simply gazed at their feet. They had journeyed several centuries in 19 hours, and the shock would be a long time wearing off.

It was a typical first day in America for the dispossessed Indochinese, who are now flowing into the country at the rate of 12,000 a month. So far, the U.S. has taken in some 50,000 boat people and other refugees from the current upheaval, the highest total by far of any Western host country. New arrivals, who tend to cluster in California and the Gulf Coast region of Texas, are given free English lessons and job training, and access to Medicaid and welfare. Nine major voluntary agencies, including the U.S. Catholic Conference and the Protestant Church World Service, match arrivals with reliable sponsors who will help them adjust to their new life. The U.S. gives the voluntary agencies $350 per refugee.

Despite the aid, refugees are discovering that assimilation is far from automatic. There are the usual problems of language and loneliness. The months and often years spent in the crowded squalor of the resettlement camps have taken their toll: malnutrition is widespread, and cases of tuberculosis are found.

But far worse in the long run may be American resentment. Although a recent Gallup poll found that 57% of those questioned said that refugees would be welcome in their communities, a call-in poll sponsored by the San Francisco Chronicle found that 73% of 24,000 phoners opposed the influx of boat people.

In a few cases, suspicion has already turned to hostility. In Denver, 18 refugee families fled from their dilapidated housing project two weeks ago after a brick-and-bottle battle between the Vietnamese and their chicane neighbors. Four families have since returned. Although the fight was sparked by a chicane theft, some of the chicanos mistakenly thought that their neighbors had fought against the U.S. in Viet Nam.

The worst incident so far occurred last month in Seadrift, Texas (pop. 1,000), where some 120 Vietnamese had settled to work in crab processing plants. The Vietnamese rapidly saved up enough money to buy their own fishing boats. American fishermen accused them of undercutting market prices and of violating longstanding "gentlemen's agreements," like keeping crab traps a suitable distance from those of competitors.

On Aug. 3, Billy Joe Aplin, 35, a local fisherman, was shot and killed in an argument on a pier; two Vietnamese brothers were indicted. That night three of the refugees' boats were burned and a home was fire bombed. Most of them fled. Although many Vietnamese have trickled back, the tension persists.

Ironically, many refugees have aroused indignation for working too hard, not too little. Vietnamese fishermen are willing to labor longer and for less than their American counterparts, and they fish in far rougher seas and weather. Similarly, a union official in one Chicago factory complained that the Indochinese workers were making the regular employees look bad. "Employers cannot get enough of them," says Governor Robert Ray of Iowa, whose state has accepted nearly 4,000 refugees.

In many ways, however, the latest refugees are worse off than their predecessors, who came with the first wave of Indochinese refugees after South Viet Nam fell. While earlier refugees often brought some money with them, most of the latest immigrants have bartered their cash for their lives and must begin penniless. According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the newcomers are generally less educated and less likely to speak English. The GAO found that "some refugees, particularly some Hmong Laotians, cannot read or write in their own languages and are virtually unexposed to Western culture." They must be taught, it continued, to do such elementary things as diaper their babies and not burn firewood on top of their stoves.

The newcomers do have one advantage: many are joining family members who are already established in thriving Vietnamese communities. Yen Thi Duong, 40, recently arrived in Atlanta with her daughter and two children of her brother, Duong Xuan Phong, who had settled earlier in Atlanta with his wife Nga. Yen had sailed from Viet Nam last February on a rickety boat with 60 other people. Although the Malaysians opened fire on the refugees when they first tried to land, and many were later raped or robbed, the foursome wound up safely at a camp and were allowed to immigrate to America. "We have a different life and different customs," says Nga, who is a hospital technician, while her husband has qualified for his pharmacist license in the U.S. "But we can't regret what has happened before. We are luckier than most." sb

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