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Southeast Asians are the largest refugee group to have settled in the United States, more numerous than the Jewish refugees during World War II or Cuban refugees beginning in the late 1960s. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the largest group by far is the Vietnamese (1,223,736 individuals), followed by those from Laos (including 186,310 Hmong and 198,203 non-Hmong Lao) and Cambodians (206,052). As is sometimes true for other minority populations, community groups often state that their population is undercounted and that the actual numbers are much higher than U.S. Census records indicate.

SEAAdoc includes more materials about some of these groups than others. This reflects several factors: the amount of research that has been conducted on each group, the availability of documents and artifacts, and the scope of the Southeast Asian Archive’s current holdings.