Voices from the Camps: Vietnamese Children Seeking Asylum

7. Resettlement

c h a p t e r s e v e n Resettlement Challenges of Resettlement Unaccompanied minors have been resettled in the United States since 1975. Prior to the Comprehensive Plan of Action, they stayed as a matter of routine in refugee camps for six months to a year and then were resettled. After the CPA was implemented, they spent three to five years in refugee and detention camps. Some children and “aged-out” minors continued to be resettled, but most were repatriated. Unlike their counterparts repatriated to Vietnam, the primary crisis of unaccompanied minors in America is not one of economic survival, but loneliness. Vietnamese psychiatrist Tran Minh Tung writes of the apprehension that refugees feel when they arrive in a new land. For instance, they experience an overwhelming despair when they become ill in unfamiliar surroundings. Because of language and cultural differences, refugees cannot make their distress known. They are used to counting on their family, but no family is available. Yet, though their anguish may be great, they may not look desperate or depressed; they cover their anxiety, as expected in their culture. “Patients cannot or do not want to acknowledge the extent of their misery, lest the distress become overwhelming and the façade that they put on crumbles when they cannot bear it any more.”1 The most vulnerable of the “first wave” Vietnamese, those who arrived in the United States in 1975, were the unaccompanied minors. They were hit particularly hard by separation from family and friends. Even in the first days of their arrival in America, while waiting in refugee camps to be resettled, some of these children showed symptoms of psychological distress, and within three months several were “depressed enough to be suicidal.” In a study of refugees • 138 • at Camp Pendleton, California, Liu, Mamanna, and Murata found that children in families fared reasonably well; unaccompanied children did not. The unaccompanied minors were ridiculed by other children, who called them “bastards .” The unaccompanied children suffered from insomnia and “vague somatic complaints . . . the prevailing mood was one of lethargy and hopelessness .” Three of the eighteen children in the group manifested marked signs of depression: “they lay in bed both day and night, with little or no sound sleep.” American o‹cials did not fully comprehend how vulnerable these children were because of their separation from family. They contributed to the distress of these children by removing them from the custodial Vietnamese families who were caring for them.2 Despite their initial di‹culties, most first-wave unaccompanied minors were able to make it through school and find employment. They have selectively adopted American values and customs. Some of them are financially successful , although without family or relatives, their paths to success were di‹cult. Subsequent unaccompanied minors, who came to the United States as “boat people” in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, have had a much more di‹cult time than those who preceded them. They suffered for years under Communist rule in Vietnam and during their perilous escapes. Those who escaped through the early 1980s remained up to one year in refugee camps before being resettled; later arrivals often were stuck for several years. These children have had to cope with the memories of their ordeals of escape and their life in the detention camps. Di‹culties with English have affected their ability to communicate , especially if they came to America as teenagers rather than small children . Their cultural expectations have often led to conflicts with their foster parents. Many of these children have never considered themselves to be members of the foster families in which they were placed; they have seen themselves as outsiders.3 Mortland and Egan, citing several studies and their own research conducted in the middle 1980s, conclude that unaccompanied minors have had enormous di‹culties in adjusting to America, especially in the first year of their arrival. The stages of adjustment are similar to those of bereavement: shock, disorganization , pain and despair, and finally some kind of reorganization that integrates old and new ways. A major problem has been the placement of unaccompanied minors in foster homes. Mortland and Egan cite an earlier study by Walter and Cox of unaccompanied children between 1975 and 1978 that describes the process as “tumultuous and traumatic.” The youth find it di‹cult to accept new parental figures, particularly the foster mother. Sometimes the children R E S E T T L E M E N T...