Life in America

Abstract

During 1980, about 14,000 Southeast Asian (SEA) refugees arrived in the United States each month. Others wait in overcrowded refugee camps in the hope of immigrating. They have left their homes and loved ones, traveled on foot across rugged mountains, and swum dangerous rivers with their children and a few meager possessions on their backs. Others, the boat traveled over 900 miles across windswept South China seas in rickety boats. What happens to these people after they arrive here? How are we caring for their enormous physical and psychological problems? Processing hundreds of Southeast Asians through screening centers, we became conscious of how little we knew about these people. Based on interviews with nurses and others working with SEA refugees in clinics, hospitals, and university settings in the St. Paul-Minneapolis area, we have tried to identify their unique problems and needs. The Southeast Asians are a diverse group. Those described here include Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians (Tai and Hmong). Although it may be impossible to generalize about an entire group of people, the literature and those who have had repeated contacts with