Refugee and America

Refugees are the people who are forced to leave their homeland for reasons such as war, violence or persecution. Immigrants on the other hand take a conscious decision of leaving their country in search of better work opportunities for themselves and are not forced to leave by any means. This brings its own set of differences for the ones who have to rush out. The refugees who came to US from Vietnam did not have time to learn the language or the culture of the US as opposed to the immigrants who came through the Immigration act of 1975. Moreover, settling the refugees in a common place would take too much toll on the economy as they were not suitable for the American market. Having too many unskilled labors in a state would mean more funds in aid for the helpless burden on the society. Therefore, the people were distributed over 821 postal codes.

In America, things were a bit better for the refugees but not all of them. For instance, many refugees were from Vietnam and therefore were thought of to be enemies by the local people. They faced similar micro and sometimes "macroaggression" as the Japanese did during the second world war. They would be forced to live under harsh circumstances and often discriminated against since they “looked” more like the enemy. They would often be called “gook” among other disrespectful things. It is not like racism was against the Vietnamese people, but they had the faced the most brunt of it.

Well racism was never against any one particular ethnicity or community, it was against all non-Caucasians. Therefore, along with the surge of all Asians, African Americans and Latinos also joined the struggle. With strength from numbers, the non-Caucasians decided to get their rightful rights. These interethnic/racial communities inspired each other and laid down ground work for each other to walk the paths to liberty. The black people struggled for Latinos and Asians alike and vice versa. Their sheer number was too big for the authorities to ignore and therefore they had to give in to their demands, or at least hear them out. This brought together all the genders of the APA community and therefore had them combine their efforts to a better life. One such female leader was Pat Sumi who worked on projects like “Attitude check” which were meant to make the American soldiers rethink their hateful thoughts against the Viet Cong.