Explore Key Topics - Escape & Survival - Post-1975 Emigration

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The Amerasians
A group of refugees affected by the ODP were Amerasians and their families, who were allowed to enter because of the Amerasian Homecoming Act passed in 1987. Amerasians are the children of U.S. military personnel and civilian employees, who were primarily males, and Asian women. The majority are from Vietnam. After the war, Amerasians and their families faced harsh social, cultural, and economic discrimination in Vietnam because of their mixed race ancestry, negative stereotypes about their mothers’ social relations, and their fathers’ affiliation with an enemy force. Some were abandoned by their mothers and found refuge with relatives, strangers, or lived on the streets.

The U.S. military neglected these Amerasian children at the end of the war, and only after international attention revealed their status did the U.S. government make special accommodations for their departure and resettlement. Once they arrived, they were given similar assistance to that provided to other Southeast Asian refugees. Due to lack of contact information, very few were reunited with their biological fathers, who as former soldiers had moved on with their civilian lives. Some never even knew they had fathered a child. Most Amerasians were young adults when they arrived and faced similar hardships as other refugees, yet they live with the emotional scars of being racially stigmatized in Vietnam in addition to encountering ethnic, racial, and linguistic discrimination in the U.S.

The Final Waves
Southeast Asians entering the United States in recent years arrive as immigrants sponsored by family members rather than as refugees. Resettlement services and financial assistance for Southeast Asians diminished with the arrival of successive groups. By the 1990s, nations no longer wanted to accept refugee populations, and countries with temporary refugee camps began returning refugees to their countries of origin, stating that they were not political refugees fleeing persecution but rather immigrants merely seeking better economic opportunities.

Refugees who were already resettled protested against this repatriation policy and organized to help. Nevertheless, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sent back or repatriated Southeast Asians as the refugee camps closed, ending in 1997. As of 2005, the final contingent of Southeast Asian refugees was being processed for resettlement in the U.S. This group included 15,500 Hmong who temporarily lived at Wat Tham Krabok Buddhist Temple in Thailand and almost 2,000 Vietnamese asylum seekers residing in the Philippines who fled the refugee camps.

Some groups continue to face persecution in their homelands as we move into the 21 st century. Their overseas counterparts have tried to garner international political attention to both the plight of political and religious dissidents and the mistreatment of ethnic groups. Additionally, some refugees are stranded in countries of first asylum, while some of those who settled in other countries attempt to be reunited with family members in the United States.

Future Generations
Even with immigration slowing to a trickle, however, the Southeast Asian American population will continue to grow as a result of the natural birth rate within the U.S. The average age of the Southeast Asian American population is younger than the general population, and the majority is or soon will be of childbearing age. As of 2005, there is a growing third generation and an emerging fourth generation of Southeast Asian Americans.

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