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Greeting refugees, US city draws on wisdom learned decades ago from Laotian immigrants

by Ellen Wulfhorst | @EJWulfhorst | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 26 August 2016 04:01 GMT

Chao Vang, a Hmong refugee from Laos who arrived in the United States in 1993, sells vegetables at a farmers market in his adopted hometown of Missoula, Montana, U.S. August 9, 2016. REUTERS/Ellen Wulfhorst

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By Ellen Wulfhorst

MISSOULA, Montana, Aug 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Decades after hosting Hmong families who had fled Laos, the small city of Missoula, Montana, nestled in the Rocky Mountains, is drawing on the success of that experience to welcome a new set of refugees.

The opportunity given to the Hmong, who moved to northwest Montana after the Vietnam War, is one Missoula residents say they want to offer to a new generation of people seeking refuge from violence, poverty and oppression.

"I feel like having people come here, it's awesome. It's cool," said 18-year-old Manewan Vang, sounding in no uncertain terms like an American teenager. Vang's parents moved to the Missoula area before she was born.

The latest campaign to take in refugees was launched last year by residents who founded refugee support group Soft Landing Missoula and the International Rescue Committee, which had been in Missoula from 1979 to 1991 resettling Hmong.

"This isn't a new concept for Missoula," said Molly Short Carr, Missoula IRC office director. "It's something that's already been part of the fabric of the community and has had benefits that the community sees today still."

The first wave of Hmong, an ethnic minority from the mountains of Laos, arrived in the mid- and late 1970s.

Many had worked with U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency in Laos and were in danger when the communist Pathet Lao claimed victory in 1975.

Thousands of Hmong resettled in the United States, and hundreds gravitated to Missoula, due largely to efforts by a CIA officer named Jerry Daniels, who had grown up in the area.

Vang Pao, a Lao army general and Hmong leader, settled on a farm near Missoula in the Bitterroot Valley.

The Hmong learned English, found jobs and raised families, and their children became engineers, doctors and teachers, said Missoula Mayor John Engen.

"Old-school American dream stuff can happen here," said Engen, a vocal supporter of the city's effort to welcome more refugees.

"Fundamentally, I think we have an opportunity to lend a hand," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a recent interview. "People are suffering."

REWARDING EXPERIENCE

The first refugees to arrive last week was a family of six from the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the IRC which has reopened its office in Missoula.

The family had lived in refugee camps for 12 years. Three of the four children have never known life outside a camp.

Since the refugees arrived in their new home, local residents have stopped to welcome them and shake their hands, Short Carr said.

The city expects to host about 25 more refugees by the end of September and 150 refugees over roughly the next 12 months, she said.

The renewed refugee effort was sparked when Mary Poole, the co-founder of Soft Landing Missoula, and her friends saw the iconic photograph last year of Alan Kurdi, a tiny Syrian boy lying dead on a Turkish beach.

The toddler had drowned as his family tried to reach Europe.

"There was something about that picture and something about being a mother to a young son that just absolutely crushed me," Poole said.

The lessons learned from the Hmong experience, which was not without its bumps, will help those on their way to Missoula, residents said.

Ellen Leahy, director of the Missoula City-County Health Department, was a young nursing instructor teaching public health when the first Hmong arrived, an experience she calls "formative."

Residents and newcomers alike struggled to overcome language barriers and cultural differences, she said.

"When it was good and rewarding, it was very rewarding. When it was frustrating, it was overwhelming," she said.

"For the most part in this community, it brought out the best of people and that was very positive."

Leahy recounted a home visit to see a young pregnant Hmong woman, accompanied by the woman's mother, a translator, nurses and students trying to determine if the mother-to-be planned to bottle- or breast-feed.

The Americans wrongly understood the answer was bottle-feed and asked to see the pregnant woman's supplies and equipment, Leahy said.

The Hmong began giggling, and soon all were laughing, she said.

"It was just this breakthrough that to me didn't need a language," Leahy said. "We knew we were trying to work together, and that moment sticks with me."

DETRACTORS

Opening Missoula to refugees has drawn criticism from residents such as Tom Wing, who said he wants new arrivals to be more thoroughly vetted and put through lie-detectors tests.

He said Missoula's resources are already stretched to take care of its own needy residents and that a comparison of today's refugees with the Hmong was wrong.

The Hmong were both self-sufficient and had no animosity toward the United States, he said.

"Their experience is totally different than the refugees that are pouring into Europe and the United States now," he said.

"The mayor of Missoula would like to tell you that all the refugees are going to be like the Hmong," he added. "They're using that as a scapegoat for their liberalist views on world migration."

The IRC said supporters far outnumber detractors.

"For every one person that's negative, I get eight people who are coming forward and want to do something and help," Short Carr said.

More than 200 people have signed up with Soft Landing Missoula to pitch in, Poole said.

"We have really something so special going on here in Missoula, this amazing, amazing community support," she said.

(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, editing by Katie Nguyen.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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