During the later years of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the American and South Vietnamese military sought to cut off community military supply routes which moved along the so-called Ho Chi Min Trail through the forests of eastern Cambodia, a country which at that time proclaimed itself to be politically "neutral." Cambodia, however, was ineffective in defending its military neutrality. The U.S. and Vietnam supported the creation of an unpopular, anti-communist military regime in Cambodia. When American involvement in Southeast Asia waned and, in 1975, collapsed, a Communist force called the Khmer Rouge swept through the country and seized its government. Some 34,000 supporters of the old regime fled to the safety of Thailand at that time. Most of them were resettled in third countries such as the U.S. and France where many of them had personal ties.
The Khmer Rouge then imposed what became popularly known as the "killing fields," in which unspeakable brutality was carried out by the insurgents and their supporters against the Cambodian population. Their purpose was the restructuring of Cambodian society, and the destruction of all the features that characterized Khmer life and culture prior to their ascendancy. Through the most drastic of measures, the Khmer Rouge intended to create a supremely egalitarian agrarian society patterned after the most extreme strains of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In the process, through starvation, disease, and murder, they killed 1.7 million Cambodians— or approximately one-eighth of the total population — between 1975 and 1979. So pervasive was their rule during those years that few Cambodians were able to escape.
In 1978 and 1979, after a series of minor conflicts and skirmishes, the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and quickly captured the capital city of Phnom Penh, forcing the Khmer Rouge into the hinterlands, where they continued to wage guerilla warfare for several years. In the midst of the general confusion, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians moved westward toward the Thai border and into Thailand. In 1979, an international response led to the opening of several refugee camps within Thailand for some 160,000 refugees; another 350,000 lived in Thailand outside of the camps, and some 100,000 fled to Vietnam, where the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) provided them with assistance. Between 1978 and 1993, Cambodian refugees from the UNHCR camps were admitted to the US, Australia, France, Canada, and several other countries. The US admissions program for Cambodians largely concluded in 1985, and only small numbers have entered the country since then.
Like Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos was once part of the French colony known as Indochina. Although Laos is a small country, it is ethnically diverse by any standard: Of its fifty or so distinct ethnic groups, many Hmong, Mien, Khmu, Thai Dam, and Lao (sometimes called "Lowland Lao") arrived in the United States as refugees. Of those, the Hmong and Lao have the largest populations in this country.
Laos was a pawn in the murky politics of Southeast Asia after the defeat of the French on the Lao-Vietnamese border in 1953. The West supported a monarchy, while the Communist world backed an insurgent group called the Pathet Lao. A civil war raged, and the U.S. in particular provided both economic and military support to Hmong fighters in the north in what has since been called the "Secret War." In 1975, when Communists took control of both Vietnam and Cambodia, the Pathet Lao took control of the country and established a Communist government.
Some Hmong remained to continue the fight, however, and it was not until 1978 that the back of their resistance was broken by government troops. This was followd by the government's setting up of "re-education camps" that were generally regarded as even more severe than those of the Vietnamese. During the same period, the country experienced a devastating series of famines and floods, which compounded the wartime devastation.
Thousands of Lao and Hmong crossed the Mekong River into Thailand, where refugee camps were set up. The case for Hmong was especially compelling because the U.S. had reportedly promised that if Laos were lost to the communists, it would provide the Laotians with any assistance they would need. This migration into Thailand continued steadily for many years, despite protests by the host country, Thailand, that many were "economic migrants" and not true refugees. Initially, U.S. acceptance of the Lao and Hmong as refugees was substantial, but in recent years the numbers have dwindled.
The Vietnamese comprise the largest population of Southeast Asian refugees to have settled in the United States. With their American-born children, they number approximately 995,000. Most of them come from what was once the Republic of Vietnam, known as "South Vietnam," which had its capital at Saigon. Their government, allied with the United States, collapsed under military pressure from Communist North Vietnam in April of 1975.
The first arrivals: As Saigon fell to the Communists, some 135,000 Vietnamese fled to America. These were mainly ex-military and government officials, Vietnamese who had worked for the U.S. during the war and their families. Initially, they came to four U.S. military bases in California, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Several national voluntary agencies, under contract from the Department of State, resettled these new arrivals in communities throughout the country and arranged "sponsorships" for the refugees. These sponsorships involved the provision of housing and initial support from interested Americans.
The "boat people": Conditions in the southern portion of the newly reunified Vietnam worsened in the late 1970s, and there also was a drive by the new government to rid the country of its Chinese merchant class. As a result, thousands of Vietnamese and Sino-Vietnamese sought to escape from the country. In addition to the merchant Chinese, these included many Vietnamese farmers and fishermen and their families. No one knows exactly how many thousands of people took to boats, and some estimates are that as many as half of them perished at sea. The successful ones reached refugee camps in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. From those camps, many were admitted to the United States and other "third countries."
Orderly departure: Reports about drowning and piracy created growing concern in the late 1970s, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was able to negotiate an agreement under which the government of Vietnam would allow "orderly departure" for some of its citizens with relatives who had resettled abroad. This family reunification program at first enjoyed some success, but those Vietnamese without relatives abroad continued to escape by boat. By the mid-1980s, numerous disputes arose between the Vietnamese government and resettlement countries over eligibility for the program, and this slowed the rate of departures significantly. Orderly departure was finally resumed in 1987.
Amerasians: Since the end of the war, many Americans had been concerned about the plight of so-called "Amerasians," children born in Vietnam to Vietnamese women and American fathers during the war years. Because they were of "mixed blood," the Vietnamese government regarded hem as "bui doi," or "the dust of life." When America offered to accept them as refugees, however, the Vietnamese government refused to allow their departure because they denied discriminating against them — a requirement for refugee status. The U.S. Congress then passed a measure allowing Amerasians to be admitted to the U.S. as "immigrants" who were entitled to the same benefits as refugees. Thus began the migration of some 100,000 Amerasians to this country.
Political prisoners: At the end of the war in 1975, thousands of South Vietnamese — including former members of the military and former U.S. government employees — were sent to "re-education camps" where most were detained for many years under harsh conditions. Concerned about these former comrades-in-arms and colleagues, the U.S. Government pleaded for many years for their release and permission to emigrate. Finally, in 1988, the U.S. Department of State reached an agreement with the Vietnamese government to allow many of them to leave through the Orderly Departure Program. An estimated 100,000 were released to join family members overseas.
Today: Amerasians, former political prisoners, and family members continue to come to the United States through "orderly departure" and ordinary immigration channels. In addition, US officials are now rescreening thousands of Vietnamese who had been repatriated from Asian refugee camps, to determine if they qualify for US refugee status (the ROVR program — "Resettlement Opportunities for Vietnamese Returnees"). In all, compared with the many thousands during the past decades, these numbers are small, and the U.S. Government, which now has diplomatic relations with Vietnam, has expressed its intent to "normalize" this migration through regular immigration channels in the near future.
Afghanistan has always been an attractive place for political powers of ‎different historical periods and was either invaded or dominated by various ‎countries for hundreds of years. ‎ Twenty-nine years of war in Afghanistan has been devastating and ‎traumatizing for all Afghans. The majority of Afghans who came to the US ‎are refugees and/or torture survivors. Many of them have been affected by ‎War, the dictatorship of The Taliban and other oppressive regimes, ‎resulting in loss of at least one family member. These refugees who mostly ‎suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder are often re-traumatized during ‎the process of their resettlement in the U.S. Aside from addressing the ‎emotional conditions, such as loss and bereavement, depression and insomnia, ‎nightmares and flashbacks, issues like poverty, racism, sexism, and ‎prejudice, lack of adequate and culturally competent social services must be ‎addressed in the process of their recovery.‎
Iran ’s geopolitical situation and wealth of natural resources has been of great historical significance and has a direct relevance to the current situation of Iran, and displacement of millions of Iranian refugee and immigrant. The impact of many invasions and domination of foreign powers and/or domestic dictators throughout history, convinced Iranian people to seek change one more time in 1979. The 1979 revolution succeeded in toppling the Shah's despotic monarchy but led to the establishment of yet another dictatorship, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Iranian refugees have come from a variety of backgrounds into the U.S and ‎have their own specific issues and experiences due to their class, gender, ‎ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion and political views. These refugees fled the ‎fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran as ex-political prisoners, torture survivors, underground human ‎right activists, feminists, members of the Kurdish ethnic minority , Bahais ‎and other religious minorities. These refugees suffer from Post-traumatic ‎Stress Disorder and resettlement related issues.‎

Keo is a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. Her husband ‎was dragged out of their hut and murdered in front of her eyes. ‎Afterwards, his body was hung with a sign hanging behind his back, which ‎said “War Slave”.
read Keo's story