long beach, California, USA – Cambodian-Americans living here have a message for their friends and relatives in Cambodia: Life in the US is good, but it is not the promised land for everybody.
“If you don’t have the skills, and you don’t have the willingness to work hard, you will not succeed,” said Chhim Him, executive director of the Cambodian Association of America.
For about two decades, the CAA has been providing social services and training to newly arrived Cambodians. And while some have prospered, Chhim Him says, more have not.
“Some people get manufacturing jobs, while some do piecework. But they can only make $2 to $3 per hour, and that is not enough to live on. Hotel and restaurant jobs abound for those of limited skills, but both parents have to work if they want to earn enough to live on. And they find it very hard, because Cambodian parents tend to be overprotective of their children,” Chhim Him said.
A 1996 study of the Asian-Pacific community by the California Community Foundation reveals some disturbing trends. According to the study:
• 46 percent of the Cambodian population in Los Angeles County lives in poverty, with a per-capita annual income of $4,639 compared to the county-wide average of $16,149.
• Cambodian households, however, are a bit more affluent than the per capita figures would indicate, perhaps because large families pool incomes. The median household income for Cambodians is $17,343, compared to the county-wide average of $34,965.
• Yet Cambodians are the poorest of all Asian-Pacific immigrant groups, ranking behind the Laotians (40 percent of whom are poor), Vietnamese (21 percent poor) and Thais (11 percent poor).
• They also post a higher unemployment rate than any other immigrant group, with 14 percent jobless in 1996 compared to 3 percent for the Japanese, who had the lowest unemployment rate.
• Fewer than three in 10 Cambodians could speak English well, while only 17 percent had become US citizens. Cambodians were more likely than any other immigrants to rent instead of own a home, while one-third did not own a car.
• On the positive side, however, Cambodians had the lowest arrest rate for any immigrant group, at 183.7 arrests per 100,000 people compared to 8,296 for Latinos and 5,742 for Pacific Islanders.
Chhim Him says another worrisome trend is the high number of Cambodians who remain on public assistance as much as 15 or 20 years after arriving in the US.
“I fear it is becoming generational,” he said, adding that Cambodian children tend to drop out of school at a higher rate than either blacks or Hispanics, and that delinquent behavior and teen pregnancy are persistent problems.
The first wave of Cambodians to arrive in the US were educated people, who on the whole have flourished, Chhim Him says. The second, larger wave were mostly illiterate rice farmers and widows, with little understanding of the need for higher education.
About 70 percent of the adult community speaks only Khmer. They cannot help their children with schoolwork, he says, and as a group place little value on school or scholastic achievement.
“They have had to jump from the Cambodian countryside into the most modern society in the world. At home, the children could roam the countryside all day—but here, they find gangs,” Chhim Him said.
One 1994 study of Cambodians in California found that more than 70 percent were long-term welfare recipients. Many suffer ongoing mental problems related to the Khmer Rouge years, but hesitate to seek help.
Chhim Him traces that reluctance to the fact that the Khmer language has no terms to describe temporary mental illness.
“A person is either completely crazy or he is not,” he said, adding that few are willing to face that kind of stigma.
The result is a fixed, rigid community, in which people are reluctant to take chances, Chhim Him said.
“People tend to stay where they can speak the language and find friends,” rather than moving in search of better jobs, he said.
One of the most poignant facets of life in US may be the ambivalence Cambodians feel about their homeland. Many have such horrible memories they never want to see it again—and yet they continue to miss it, and the friends and families they left behind.
“There is a high sense of nostalgia, and of guilt,” Chhim Him said. “People will send money home. It may be in the tens of millions a year; we don’t know.”
At the same time, Cambodian-Americans who are barely getting by sometimes feel overwhelmed by the pleas for money from the homeland.
“They get calls and faxes all the time, asking for money. It is hopeless over there,” Chhim Him said.
And yet, he added, “I am in Long Beach physically, but my heart is in Cambodia.”
