Refugee resettlement was designed to relocate people from Cambodia who survived the Pol Pot genocide to America, but once they came they were not given citizenship. Cambodians were chucked into already impoverished areas, into an alien society they knew nothing of and left to their own devices. They and their children often turned to crime having no other way to feed or house themselves. As a result, they are targeted by law enforcement and immigration agencies, minors tried as adults and given harsh sentences. Law enforcement and immigration agencies even started deporting many Southeast Asian Americans who grew up in America for crimes for which they had already served their time. Rather than try to address the lack of opportunity and resources for these immigrants, the government makes no effort to aid these people and even penalizes them through denying welfare if they are declared overearning. Groups came together to form advocacy organizations aimed at young Cambodians to help keep them off the streets and in school; they later expanded to help fight court cases in the justice system and immigration. Even though this helped a lot of people, the justice and immigration system had already destroyed the lives of many families that have already been through extreme trauma by targeting them in such ways. Many thoughts came to me while reading and watching this material. One major realization is that the Southeast Asian community is often left out of the immigration debate, they fade into obscurity and get lumped in with other Asians only to then be compared against the favored “model minority.”
Powered by:
top