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Posted July 03, 2005

Refugees reflect on American independence

By Alex Hummel
of The Northwestern

The scent of fresh parsley enveloped Dao Chang as she bundled entire, green shocks of the herb at Lo’s Oriental Store on Murdock Avenue in Oshkosh last week. The task was part of her job. Three hours a day. Stocking refrigerator cases. Whatever work needs to be done.

It’s a small slice of stability for Chang, a mother of nine who arrived in the United States with her family last Sept. 29.

“She said it’s really hard to learn English,� said 13-year-old Pasua Lo, whose family owns the small store. “She’s trying hard and her kids are trying hard to learn English.�


Monday will be Chang’s first Independence Day in the United States since her family uprooted and came to the U.S., part of a new wave of Hmong refugees. Does the “first� register?

“She said it’s a little better than being in Thailand,� Lo said, translating.

Is America what Chang expected? “She said, like, ‘Sort of,’� Lo said.

“Independence� means different things to different refugees in different phases of the refugee experience. The road to it and prosperity in the United States is still a challenge-laden one. The small wave of Hmong and East African refugees who have come to Oshkosh in the last year or two are still making the adjustment.

Barbara Biebel, director of resettlement and immigration services for Catholic Charities of the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, calls the life experience many refugees are living “a roller coaster ride.�

Arrival begins with physical exhaustion but emotional “exhilaration,� Biebel said. Then, the hoop jumping begins.

“Immediately, we’re packing them off to make applications for services and school, so that’s busy work,� she said. “This exhilaration continues for weeks and possibly a month or so. Then, the busyness starts to fall off, and they get into the day to day – ‘Go look for a job, go to the English classes, struggle through day to day.’ … Then you see the roller coaster take a dive. Emotionally, many refugees are sad. Many start to wonder why they came. They had to come.�

It’s an experience about 66 Hmong refugees destined for Winnebago County will dive into this year. That new influx is greater than the 63 who arrived in 2004 after the dissolution of Thai refugee camp Wat Tham Krabok. Five Dinka families have also moved to Oshkosh.

The arrivals, and the adjustments, never stopped.

“We are seeing people now when things didn’t go like they thought they would or hoped they would or had heard they would, there is a bit of a letdown,� said Brian Jacobsen, director of community services for the low-income service agency Advocap Inc. “I think that is a normal part of the process.�

The challenges new refugees have faced are many, including x-factors:

E Rules established after Sept. 11, 2001 have made it more difficult for refugees to establish proper U.S. identification. It has meant an extra step: the Catholic Diocese has had to, in some cases, vouch for newcomers and stress their refugee status, Biebel said.

E The eroding manufacturing base has had equal severity on refugee peoples. Gone are many of the jobs and employers who provided positions based on manual labor but less-reliant on verbal communication skills. They were often the most logical for refuges to slip into.

E The establishment of Wisconsin’s W-2 program since the first wave of Hmong refugees in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The program requires more immediate employment, giving refugees less time to develop some language skills.

But amid modern hurdles there are plenty of refugee success stories rooted in a bit deeper history.

Dr. Vin Vu’s Oshkosh dentist office is like most: comfy waiting room, art on the walls, a little receptionist booth where you check in. His business cards warmly remind clients: “Your Dental Care, Your Friend.�

About 31 years ago, the North Main Street office and the educational resume Vu achieved to open it probably would have seemed a statistical improbability, to say the least.

Vu, then 6, escaped the 1974 fall of Saigon with his family and family friends. Seventeen people, he said, crammed into a Honda Civic and tried to flee to France at the Saigon airport. Didn’t work. They eventually ditched a successful shoe franchise, a four-story home with a maid and chauffeur for an outgoing ocean barge – their lifeboat.

“I remember very clearly how intense it was the day we left, being in my mom’s arms and being in the ship, the ocean barge,� said Vu, now 36 with two children of his own and a third on the way. “We had to turn around because there was fighting all around us. There was artillery shooting off, planes shooting down. The sky was lit up … We were like a sitting duck.�

Eventually, a U.S. escort vessel found the floating barge and led it to the Philippines. From there, Vu and his family made their way to the United States. They eventually rooted in Minneapolis, his entrepreneurial parents taking jobs in cleaning and the garment industry. “

And, the little boy in that barge whose mother sewed Vietnamese money into her children’s clothing as a survival tactic, eventually grew up to earn bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He graduated from Marquette University dental school.

He made it. Independence.

“All along, (his parents) stressed the importance of education,� Vu said. “That’s the key I want all refugee people to understand, and all people coming to this country to understand.�

Jacobsen said Advocap is continuing to build a list of employers willing to help new refugees land and acclimate to new jobs. He suspects the list may have grown to 10 to 15 employers a year from now.

Meanwhile, the nature of the jobs available poses a challenge. With manufacturing jobs dwindling, refugee placements increasingly tap the service industry and jobs more reliant on communication with lower pay and benefits.

“The employers that we traditionally used for manufacturing are no longer hiring or are no longer here,� Jacobsen said. “So, we’ve got more people in the service industry than we had before.�

Biebel said the refugee experience is far more difficult to maneuver than it was a century ago. Same idea, perhaps. But the adjustments European immigrants made to a still-agrarian America weren’t as severe as those the Hmong or Sudanese Dinka are making in even small, 21st Century Oshkosh.

“It is the pace of complexity and life in the United States,� she said. “I think it’s harder to live here, and I think it’s harder to live here in the last 10 to 15 years as somebody who is born and raised in this country.�