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Cambodian Americans are Americans born or raised in, or descended from those born or raised in, Cambodia. The majority of Cambodian Americans are of Khmer descent. Other ethnicities in the U.S. native to Cambodia include Chinese Cambodians, Vietnamese Cambodians, and Cham. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, there are 276,667 people of Cambodian descent living in the United States. The majority of Cambodian Americans are concentrated in California and Massachusetts. Cambodian Americans did not become a significant sized population until after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979. After 1979, large waves of Cambodians emigrated to the United States as refugees. The majority of Cambodian Americans today practice Theravada Buddhism and speak Khmer, American English, and or Cham. Community issues include, but are not limited to, limited access to quality education, poverty, trouble assimilating, deportation, untreated mental health related problems, a lack of access to mental health related resources, and domestic violence.

History

Prior to 1975, most of the few Cambodians in the United States were children of upper income families or were students with government-funded scholarships sent abroad to study. Cambodian immigrants began to enter the United States in three waves following the start of the civil war that engulfed the nation in chaos from March 1970 until April 1975. The first wave of Cambodian immigration to the United States was just before the Khmer Rouge took power. About 5,000 people during May and April of 1975 were able to immigrate to the United States. The communist Khmer Rouge, lead by Pol Pot, won the civil in April 1975. Immediately after the civi war the Khmer Rouge changed Cambodia's name to Democratic Kampuchea, but the new nation was anything but democratic. The Khmer Rouge forcefully attempted to change all aspects of Cambodian life starting with the forced evacuation of the two million people who lived in Phnom Penh. All the residents of Phnom Penh were ordered to return to their ancestral villages at gunpoint. As residents evacuated the city the new government forced citizens who were former government officials, former military commanders, educated, professionals, business men, and landlords to identify themselves and these individuals were labeled as enemies to the new state and killed. The Khmer Rouge removed private property, currency, banks, colleges, schools, hospitals, markets and all other institutions considered modern or Western. Children older than seven were taken from their parents and children were trained to spy on and reveal the conversations of their parents. The entire nation became a forced labor camp with excessive work in the fields and little food. Starving Cambodians who looked for wild plants and animals to eat were killed. Buddhist monks were often persecuted and the nation's temples sacred to the people were destroyed or used for weapon storage. The Khmer Rouge also committed what can be considered a genocide. The government persecuted ethnic minority groups. Members of the Islamic Cham minority were forced to eat pork and use their mosques to raise pigs. The Khmer Rouge killed about one third of the Cham population. Ethnic Vietnamese living in Cambodia were also systematically executed and bodies were thrown into the Mekong River daily. Half of the ethnic Chinese in Cambodia were murdered and labeled enemies of the state because of their involvement in business. The Khmer Rouge also murdered indigenous minorities. The Khmer Rouge's government was characterized by excessive brutality: 1.7 million Cambodians of the 7.9 million total population died from disease, injury, execution, forced labor, hunger, and lack of shelter from the elements. Attempting to escape the previously described horrors of the brutal new government, a second wave of Cambodian immigrants arrived in the United States during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. This second wave of Cambodian immigrants to the United States was comprised of educated Cambodians who escaped into Thailand during the Khmer Rouge regime. These people were classified as "displaced persons" and resettled by the United Nations in western nations including the United States. By 1978, 8,000 of these people were cleared for resettlement and 3,000 were sent to the United States. In 1975 President Gerald Ford created an Interagency Task Force for the anticipated refugees in response to the expected fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon. 130,000 spots for refugees were allocated: 125,000 for Vietnamese and 5,000 for Cambodians. About 10,000 rural Cambodians also escaped into Thailand and the United States admitted around 6,000. Another, third wave of Cambodian immigrants entered the United States following the 1979 overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. Many Cambodians were close to starving because farmers were unable to harvest the rice crop with the disruption caused by the Khmer Rouge retreat into the jungle. A second civil war started on the Thai Cambodian border with the retreating Khmer Rouge causing even more disruption and displacing more Cambodians. Forced to leave the country, Cambodian immigrants began flooding into Thailand. Overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants, the Thai government stopped allowing new arrivals refugee rights because the large number of Cambodian immigrants created a drain on the nation's resources and a national security threat. In 1980, the United States Congress passed the 1980 Refugee Act. The act used the United Nations definition of refugee: "a person who is outside of his or her country and is unable or unwilling to return to it owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." The new legislation made room for more Cambodian immigration to the United States. In total, an estimated 158,000 Cambodians immigrated to the United States up until 1994 as refugees, immigrants, and humanitarian parolees.

Assimilation of Cambodian Immigrants

The United State's government ended its efforts to rapidly admit Cambodian refugees in 1994. Few Cambodians have entered the United States since 1994, but the children of Cambodian immigrants are part of a quickly multiplying population of American Cambodians. After the passing of the 1980 Refugee Act, the Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was created with a branch in every state to keep refugees dispersed in order to minimize the impact on financial, social service, and educational resources in any particular state or city. The ORR contracted volunteer agencies to find temporary homes for Cambodian immigrants with individuals, families, church groups, and other local organizations. The ORR also worked to help Cambodian immigrants with financial assistance, food, connections with community service based or state welfare programs, enrolling their children in schools, find jobs, registering in English-as-a-Second-Language programs, finding vocational training courses, and getting health care. ORR attempted to help refugees connect with or find relatives and friends already in the United States to help them transition into the society so different from the rural and fishing lives many of the refugees lead in Cambodia. The ORR sought cities with ample cheap housing and resettlement officials within the ORR searched for areas with entry-level jobs available that did not require knowledge of the English language. However, the concerns of the ORR were based on the preferences of the United States government and not on what Cambodian immigrants considered priorities. This disconnect in the service of the ORR compromised it effectivity in assimilating Cambodian refugees and immigrants. The refugees themselves also wanted to join friends and family in the United States if they had any, strongly valued living in an area with access to a Buddhist temple, wanted to live somewhere with the warm climate they were accustomed to in the tropics, and preferred to live in states where they perceived an opportunity to support themselves economically or receive adequate public assistance.

Cambodian Concentration in the United States

West Coast

Prior to the civil war in Cambodia there were very few Cambodian immigrants and the United States and therefore no Cambodian-American communities. One of the largest communities of ethnic Cambodians in the United States developed in Long Beach, California. Long Beach became an area of concentration for Cambodian Americans because in the late 1950s and 1960s Cambodian students studied engineering at California State University Long Beach because arrangements made between Prince Sihanouk and the university. After Prince Sihanouk ended diplomatic relations with the United States the programs ended, but many of the students stayed and helped fellow Cambodians who immigrated because of the civil war to settle in Long Beach. The previously founded Cambodian Students Association was changed to the Cambodian Association of America. This was the first Cambodian mutual aid association in the States. The association played a big part in aiding the waves of Cambodian immigrants and is responsible for the Cambodian American community still in Long Beach today: Long Beach currently has the largest population of ethnic Cambodians outside of Cambodia. Other Cambodian American communities developed within California in San Diego, the San Joaquin Valley, the Sacramento Valley, and in the Bay Area. Smaller Cambodian American communities also developed in Oregon and Washington.

East Coast

Lowell, Massachusetts also contains a significant concentration of Cambodian Americans. A missionary who worked with Cambodian refugees in Thailand returned to his home in Massachusetts and campaigned to make Massachusetts a state friendly to Cambodian refugees. He got help from Michael Dukakis: the governor of Massachusetts at the time. The governor passed an executive order in 1983 that created a Governor's Council for Refugees and Immigrants. In 1985 the governor passed another executive order that allowed state agencies to seek employment for refugees. The ample amount of employment opportunities in Lowell's electronic assembly plants drew large numbers of Cambodian immigrants to the city. A revered Buddhist monk from Cambodia, and one of the few senior monks to survive the Khmer Rouge, came to the States to create a Buddhist Temple in a community called North Chelmsford in close proximity to Lowell. The presence of the Buddhist community was a major drawing force for Cambodian immigrants to the Lowell area. Eventually, there were so many Cambodian Americans in Lowell that Cambodians comprised one fourth of Lowell's population.” Smaller Cambodian American communities in other towns in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas.

Community Issues

Racial Prejudice

Cambodian Americans are one of many ethnic minorities to face the difficulties of America's history of race related problems. Like in history, Cambodian Americans are targets of racial prejudice because they are people of color and are immigrants from non Western European nation. Because of racial inequality in the United States, Cambodian immigrants have to deal with bias in the job market, social injustice, and a lack of a political voice Anthropologist Aihwa Ong asserts that the treatment of Cambodian Americans shows how they are "subjected...to a variety of human technologies...that conspire...to make them particular kinds of ethnic minorities, laboring subjects, and moral beings." Ong argues that Cambodian Americans identities and lives have been unfairly shaped by America's welfare system into a position lacking agency and struggle against this push to deny the values and norms forced upon them.

Low Income, Education, and Lack of Social Mobility

First generation Cambodian Americans entered the United States from a low socioeconomic position making it difficult for them to catch up to other Americans economically. Most Cambodian refugees and immigrants entering the United States after 1975 had little to no transferable job skills, were not proficient in English, did not understand modern urban life, and suffered from mental health problems related to the trauma they experienced in Cambodia. Only five percent of the Cambodian immigrant population had the skills required to enter a white-collar job. The majority of Cambodian immigrants entered the United States as members of the poor, working class. They tended to work in electronics assembly plants, in meat packing, in seafood processing, in textile mills, in garment factories, in plumbing and heating equipment factories, in furniture factories, as carpenters, as janitors in office buildings, as maids in hotels, as kitchen help in restaurants, and as seasonal farm workers. Cambodian American women also began to work for wages despite their traditional role in the home. Cambodian American's have struggled to find upward social mobility in the American socioeconomic classes. This is likely a result of error in their placement by resettlement organizations. Cambodian immigrants needed cheap housing upon entering the United States, so they were often placed in inner city neighborhoods where gang violence is a serious problem. In response to the gang violence around them, many young Cambodian Americans also began to form gangs as a form of protection from other gangs. Cambodian American youth have had to struggle with the entire family trying to adapt to American life, the racism and prejudice against people of color in American society, and the desire to be accepted being denied because of difference from schoolmates and confusion at home. Because of these difficulties many Cambodian American youths drop out of high school before graduation and others turns to gangs for support. Many of the Cambodian Americans in gangs partake in criminal activities because of a need for quick income. Another reason Cambodian Americans struggle to find social mobility is Cambodian American children often have no way to succeed in school because their parents lack education and therefore cannot help them with school work. Many Cambodian American youths lack role models that are able to teach them how to succeed in the American education system. A study published in January 2007 empirically shows that second generation Cambodian Americans are disadvantaged economically to whites in the United States. The same study also revealed that a lack of education was the primary driving force for inequality in average wages between Cambodian Americans and whites and other Southeast Asian immigrant groups. Second generation Vietnamese immigrants have much higher educational attainment than second generation Cambodian immigrants because of a difference in values. As Sakamoto and Woo discuss in their study on the socioeconomic attainments of various groups of second generation Southeast Asian immigrants in the United States, second generation Vietnamese have what they call "immigrant optimism." Sakamoto and Woo describe "immigrant optimism" as a strong pressure to do well in school in order to obtain better socioeconomic status than one's immigrant parents. However, success in Cambodian culture and success in other Southeast Asian or American cultures are quite different. For most Cambodians success is following the Theravada Buddhist principal of the "middle way" and not placing too many expectations on a child so the child is not expected to do more than he or she is capable of. Cambodian American children do not face the intense parental pressure for perfect grades that is the stereotype of other Asian immigrant groups.

Widows

Many households were headed by women because they had been widowed when the Khmer Rouge killed their husbands. This group of Cambodian Americans had an incredibly difficult time adapting to the new society and becoming self-sufficient. These women had no previous experience with a competitive wage labor market. In Cambodia, they supported their families by helping with sewing, farm work, cooking, washing clothes, cleaning the home, and tending to children. Widows with young children had to take care of their children and were therefore forced to pass on key opportunities in English-as-a-Second Language programs or job training courses.

Welfare

Congress reserved a budget for a program called the "Refugee Cash Assistance Program" and one called the "Refugee Medical Assistance Program."At first, refugees could receive assistance for up to three years, but the eligibility was reduced to eighteen months, then to eight months, and in the end three months. This meant that when a Cambodian refugees eligibility time was up, he or she could not enroll in another welfare program. Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation act in 1996. The act created block grants to be given to individual states to use as necessary. Welfare-dependent individuals and families then had a lifetime limit of five years of eligibility for assistance. Although the eligibility time for welfare went from a lifetime limit of three months to five years, the lack of prolonged welfare is a problem for Cambodian Americans like the widows discussed previously or the Cambodian Americans suffering from trauma related mental health problems discussed previously.

Culture Preservation

Cambodian Americans struggle with a tension all immigrants face: adapting to American life while preserving the culture of their homeland. However, this tension is heightened for Cambodian Americans because they have to pull pieces of their culture from memory because the Khmer Rouge destroyed most important aspects of Cambodian culture during their regime. Cambodians and Cambodian Americans struggle to re-discover Cambodian dance, music, art, religion, and social norms from their destruction under the Khmer Rouge. Cultural revival for Cambodian Americans is even more difficult because many young Cambodian Americans are more interested in Western culture and global, modern culture than in the culture of their homeland. Cambodian Americans struggle to find their lost culture is also made more difficult by the push for modernization and global culture back home, especially in Pnom Penh. The Cambodian government and the rapidly growing Cambodian economy are pushing the nation to modernize and globalize. Skyscrapers and other large urban projects are being promoted as global urban spaces and are used to make the nation more internationally significant. These large scale projects intended to make Cambodia a modern and global nation like the Diamond Island City are making foreign investment, both Western and intra-Asian, the norm. As Cambodian Americans struggle to hold find a culture already somewhat obscured by the Khmer Rouge in a foreign land, the lack of cultural memory and push for a modern, international culture at home does not help their difficult search.

Mental Health

One of the most prevalent and least addressed issues in the Cambodian American community is mental health. Many Cambodian Americans suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental health issues because of what they experienced during the Khmer Rouge regime. The children of Cambodian immigrants who did experience the horrors of the Khmer Rouge are still affected because many live in a home where one or both parents have ptsd or another mental health related condition. Unfortunately, there are few programs and resources available in Cambodian American communities for healing. Most Cambodian Americans suffering from mental health complications use Buddhist monks for counseling and support and this is one of the reasons why Cambodian Americans attempt to live near Theravada Buddhist temples with Khmer monks. A study published in 2005, two decades after the resettlement of Cambodian refugees in the United States, reveals that the trauma of the Khmer Rouge regime still strongly and negatively affects the Cambodian American community. The study conducted interviews in the Khmer language on a random sample of households in the Cambodian American community in Long Beach from October 2003 to February 2005. 586 adults from ages 35 to 75 who lived in Cambodia under the rule of the Khmer Rouge and immigrated to the States before 1993 were chosen. One individual was randomly chosen from each of the randomly chosen households. The interviews aimed to assess exposure to trauma before and after immigration, experience of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, experience of major depression, and alcoholism. All the participants interviewed were exposed to trauma prior to immigration. 99% reported experiencing close to death starvation and 90% had a family member or friend murdered. 70% were exposed to violence after moving to the United States. 62% reported experiencing PTSD, 51% experienced major depression, but only 4% suffered from alcoholism. PTSD and major depression were revealed by this study to be highly common in this sample of the Cambodian American population and older age, poor English proficiency, unemployment, retirement, disability, and living in poverty within the population correlated to higher rates of PTSD and major depression. In conclusion, the study reveals that despite being removed from the trauma of the Khmer Rouge for quite sometime, the effects of the trauma have made mental health complications a major plague within the Cambodian American community.

Culture

An essential part of Cambodian American culture is the practice of Theravada Buddhism. Cambodian Americans often insist on living near a Theravada Buddhist temple with Khmer speaking monks. In Cambodia citizens say "To be Khmer is to be Buddhist" and this attitude has been integrated into Cambodian American culture. In the United States, Cambodian Americans say "to be Buddhist is to find social support." Even the poorest of Cambodian Americans donate whatever they can to Buddhist temples in their communities. Another important part of modern Cambodian American culture is an art form known as "memory work." Despite the 1.7 million deaths at the hands of the Khmer Rouge and a United Nations intervention, only one Khmer Rouge official has been properly tried and punished for crimes against humanity in an international court. In order to cope with the horrors of the past, Cambodian American creatives have used their art in what is called "memory work" to help restore justice and the Cambodian culture the Khmer Rouge intentionally tried to destroy. Cambodian American artists such as Anida Yoeu Ali, praCh Ly, Sambath Hy, and Socheata Poeuv use film, memoir, and music to remember the genocide along with to fight amnesic politics in the United States.