Southeast Asian American Refugees

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Refugees and Immigrants Sang Nguyen 3/10/15 Per. 4 A refugee is an involuntary immigrant who is forced to leave the homeland because political, religious, or ethnic persecution. An immigrant voluntarily chooses to emigrate and start life anew in another country. Seadoc uses the term Southeast Asian Americans to refer to refugees and immigrants from the countries: Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The reason why reduces came to the United States are related to the complicated history of their homelands. Western nations have been interested in colonizing Southeast Asians for centuries due to its straight political location and natural resources. The experience of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees will be discussed. On UCI's Irvine Library's…show more content…
However that’s only the beginning of their struggle. UCI’s librarians’ discuss: “those who had been well established in their homelands, such as educated professions, had to start all over again in a new language, return to school, and be re-certified in their professions” (http://seaadoc.lib.uci.edu[->0]; source #6b). It was difficult for the refugees and immigrants to start over, they had no idea how things worked around their new location. There could have been a slight chance where things stayed the same, but that was almost always unlikely. Everything about where they were now living wasn’t clear at all, anything they knew about life was taken away from them. The Southeast Asians had to adapt to their new “homeland”, which isn’t quite easy. To add on and make matters worse, many of them had to relocate a numerous amount due to the fact that they needed to find lower living costs and better employment opportunities. However there were positive outcomes to their immigration. UCI’s librarians present the following information details about this topic: “professionals provide services in the real estate, insurance, medical, legal, and banking professions” (http://seaadoc.lib.uci.edu[->1]; source #7). There were things to support the immigrants and refugees when they arrived. If there weren’t, it would be so much more difficult for them. Southeast Asians went through so much and sometimes things won’t get easier for them. However there will be times in which they get help from
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