Avy Kea’s Family Migration Story

If you were to ask my parents about their lives back home, you would find their reactions mixed with smiles and sadness. They would share joyful moments of their childhood but moments later, you would find that those stories would end with nothing more than heartache. Rarely do my parents ever speak of their past, but over my 20 years of existence, I have managed to pick up little details of their journey to America.   

1975 was the year of abrupt changes. A communist party known as the Khmer Rouge overthrew the Cambodian government and its leader, Pol Pot, declared himself as Prime Minister and ruled the country. The Khmer Rouge regime lasted approximately 4 years, causing the death toll to reach almost 4 million, or if you want me to put it more explicitly, 21% of the Cambodian population was victim of genocide.

Whether or not you have heard of the Khmer Rouge, you have or you are probably wondering the reasons why this event occurred. I could tell you to Google the reasons as you would with any tragic historical event, but you would soon find yourself reading about the Khmer rouge and social engineering and deurbanization. Instead, I will tell you the reasons my mother and father told me: Pol Pot wanted equality, and in order to meet this goal, he eliminated social classes by forcing the Khmer people to work as farmers. He made an effort to remove those who received education, and this almost often included professionals and intellectuals.

My parents are from the village outskirts of Battambang, a populous city in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge heavily focused their attention on professionals such as educators and physicians and since my parents were neither, they were not directly affected by the communist party’s actions. My parents saw this as an opportunity to escape their hometown and seek refuge in Thailand. After they arrived in Thailand, my mother’s family was fortunate to find a sponsor in America that would give them the opportunity to be free from the disasters of war. The people who sponsored my mother’s family, and my father, was a local church in Columbia, Missouri named the United Church of Christ. Without them, I’m uncertain whether or not my parents would have made it to America safely. 

It was 1979 when my parents finally arrived in the United States. Although the journey following their arrival seemed bright, they found it to be extremely challenging. If you were to ask them what obstacles they had to endure, I believe my parents would tell you this: Similar to many immigrant families, they worked hard to learn an unfamiliar culture, a culture foreign to them. They would tell you that they tried their best to provide the means to live in a place they would now call home, even after 33 years later.

Linh Chuong’s Family Migration Story

My parents are strong. My father was one of many South Vietnamese military men detained in ““re-education camps” (trai hoc tap cai tao). My father, now a jolly pot-bellied man who spends his time strolling twice daily in the park, playing with his grandkids, and composing caustic Vietnamese poems for my entertainment, tells me he was 95 pounds with most of his teeth rotted from malnutrition, hard labor, indefinite detention, no health care, and minimal housing in remote locations—in what he calls torture prisons. My mother was pregnant when he was taken and raised my brother in post-war Vietnam. She doesn’t talk about it, but I imagine it could not have been any easier for her than him.  

After three and a half years, he was released, but my family’s economic prospects, educational attainment, and freedom in Vietnam were denied permanently. My father was denied access to most occupations and closely monitored by the government through routine check ups and reportings of his daily activities. My father and mother ate yams in congee and did odd jobs for years. They eventually saved enough for farmland and then had a comfortable income after a decade of labor. However there were no prospects for us, their children. Although my father paid a small fortune to hire tutors and send my siblings to school, we were still barred from college, from even the hope of white-collar work.  

So my family tried to flee three times. We failed three times. It was not until the United States invited our family to come to the United States through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) of 1988, or more commonly called the H.O. (Humanitarian Operation) program, that we successfully left for America. 

Certainly, life in the United States started out a little bumpy. When I was growing up in the States, my father worked three jobs. My mother sewed clothes for a garment factory for at least 12 hours a day on top of cooking, cleaning and clothing her five children. I guess it is apt that they call us “resident aliens,” because that’s what we felt as students, as a family learning English as our third language (after Vietnamese and Cantonese), and as Yao Chinese ethnic minorities in Vietnam and then the United States. But my father says we have freedom of speech, thought, and movement: freedoms essential to humanity.  

This is why I fight for comprehensive immigration reform. “Immigration” conveys for me a sense of my parents’ dueling emotions and the strength of their will to live and prosper. Their dislocation, their desperation and urgency in leaving their homeland, their heartache and all their hopes for their children’s future is part of my conception of our immigrant/refugee identity. They help me recognize that the decision to immigrate is difficult and costly; immigrants do not need to be re-victimized. They need a little American hospitality, built on a desire to protect freedom and a love for others.

Camden Lee’s Family Migration Story

My family first came over during the Chinese Exclusion Era. My great grandfather was able come over during this exclusionary time because he was in the exempt class. As a student, he was able come to the US. He was also able to bring over my great grandmother and his two nephews. My family was able to support themselves because my great grandfather was the general manager of a restaurant in Washington, DC.

Camden’s story is part of our APA Heritage Month series of featuring a family migration story a day for the month of May! Find this feature at http://www.facebook.com/aajcyouth.

Chetana Musapeta’s Family Migration Story

I was born and raised in Hyderabad, India until I was eight years old when my parents decided to move to America in search of a better job opportunity and a better life. My dad’s brother was already in America and said he could help sponsor my dad to come live in America but the problem was he could only help ONE person not an entire family. It was a really tough decision on my dad but in the end he agreed to take up the offer of my uncle and go to America and try to sponsor us after he was settled there. So my dad applied for a visa and after the 9th time he finally got approved and left for America in 1999 and it took him an entire year to get a sponsorship for us to come here. My family went an entire year without being able to see my dad and he worked night and day to get a sponsorship for us. Finally a year later we were approved and I, my mom, and my two brothers came here in April of 2000. They didn’t stop there- they kept pushing until we received a green card and then our citizenship, so that we would not be at a disadvantage in America. I can never repay my parents for what they have done, they have sacrificed so much so me and my brothers can have a better life.

Chetana’s story is part of our APA Heritage Month series of featuring a family migration story a day for the month of May! Find this feature at http://www.facebook.com/aajcyouth.

Nhi Tran’s Family Migration Story

My name is Nhi Tran and I am Vietnamese-American. Viet Tran is my father and Mary Tran is my mother. Here are their stories:

My father is the middle child of seven children, and was the first to come to America in 1982. Because his poor family could only send one child at the time, my father had to make the long trip to Thailand in a boat full of strangers. He spent three days and two nights in the tiny boat without much food. Luckily, an oil rig was spotted on the way and the workers were able to provide cookies, dry food, and water to everyone on the boat. The day they all arrived on shore, it was my father’s 21^st birthday. He stayed in the wilderness of Thailand for four months before being transported to the Philippines. In the Philippines, he stayed for one year in a refugee camp learning English and the American customs, i.e. the holidays of the year, pajamas don’t count as work clothes, equality, and shirts are required outside of the home. My father entered the United States in February 1982. He remembers everything being so white. It felt very cold and soft. Never having seen snow before, he wanted to go outside. About 5-10 minutes outside, he ran back inside. My father wore a jacket for the rest of the winter. He stayed home learning English from TV because he wasn’t able to work or go to school (it was too late to enroll anywhere). One of his friends taught him to drive, and got his licenses soon after. In August, he started at Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kansas. He learned ESL there for one year, and then went straight to work.

My mother came to the United States in 1984 by airplane. She had come with her family and others in a refugee camp. The oldest son arrived in America in 1975 when sponsors weren’t required yet. Now he would be sponsoring his whole family. Eleven children and two adults make 13. Because the family was so superstitious, a doll was added to the family to make 14 altogether. The family landed in the Kansas City Airport at 11:45 PM. My mother remembers her first meal in the United States: Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was love. ‘This is what Americans eat all the time? How lucky!’ she thought. The oldest brother enrolled everyone at the closest high school where they learned ESL. He was the only person who could drive, so the schedule revolved around his work schedule. The small family sedan had to hold nine people, including the driver (not the safest idea, but you work with what you got). The oldest went to work at 6AM so everyone going to school had to wake up at that same time. He talked to the principal to open the doors early for them to wait until school started. Every day my mother and her siblings waited in the lobby until 9AM for school and then waited for another five hours after before going home. At home the girls would make dinner for the family, and then everyone would go to work in a mailroom from 9PM to 2AM. Everyone went home to sleep for a couple of hours and the whole day began again. This was the routine for the next six months until it allowed them to buy another car. This second car would be able to let them drive themselves to school. My mother and her family quit the mailroom to find a job with more reasonable hours. They found it at a printing company working from 3 to midnight. They did this all through their ESL schooling. Everyone went to college after. During this whole time, the family lived in a three bedroom house (five boys in one room and seven girls in another room).

In 1989, my parents met through mutual friends. They had a short-lived marriage, which ended with my mother moving to Oklahoma.

Rosanna Cash once said, “The key to change is to let go of fear.” Leaving what is familiar, whether with family or alone, is nothing short of frightening. My parents had to have a lot of courage, strength, and willpower to face the unknown, and I know they would do it all again for me and my sister. They are truly an inspiration, and I could never ask for more from any two individuals.

Nhi’s story is part of our APA Heritage Month series of featuring a family migration story a day for the month of May! Find this feature at http://www.facebook.com/aajcyouth.

Gee-Wey Yue’s Family Migration Story

My grandparents left from China separately to go to Taiwan, where they arrived with little to nothing. Both my maternal and paternal grandparents met and married in Taiwan.

My biological paternal grandfather was a soldier in Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist army and was killed in an ambush while defending the retreat from Mao Zedong’s forces. My paternal grandmother and my father, who was one year of age at the time, made it on to a boat that took them to Taiwan. She did not want my father to be brought up into a life of hardship and almost threw him overboard, but others managed to talk her out of it. She settled in southern Taiwan and remarried to the man I know as my paternal grandfather.

My maternal grandfather was a courier for the army had to leave his wife and children behind in China. He became one of the first professors at a university in northern Taiwan. My maternal grandmother came to Taiwan with next to nothing. She severed ties with her family and gave up the family’s wealth after a dispute with her father. My grandfather remarried to my grandmother.

My mother and father were raised on opposite ends of Taiwan and came separately to the United States in the ’70s for their master’s degrees. They both attended Auburn University, a school that was offering many scholarships to international students at the time. My parents met as students and got married before even my grandparents had met one another.

My father worked really hard to get a job here in the United States so that he could become a citizen. He even kept a suit in the lab so that anytime someone mentioned an opportunity for a job, he could be presentable. My sister, brother, and I were all born as US citizens and are indebted to our grandparents and parents for their hardships.

Gee-Wey’s story is part of our APA Heritage Month series of featuring a family migration story a day for the month of May! Find this feature at http://www.facebook.com/aajcyouth.