Increasing refugee problems in U.S.

Press, 21 August 1979, Page 23

Increasing refugee problems in U.S.

By

JOHN HUTCHISON

in San Francisco

Every month, thousands of Indo-Chinese refugees arrive in California, where more than 100,000 have come to live since 1975. Most of the new arrivals are “boat people," the lucky few who have survived pirates, disease, starvation, and drowning in their flight from Vietnam or Cambodia. Their first sight of the United States comes when they walk down the steps from a plane at Travis Air Force Base, north of San Francisco. About 60,000 now live in Southern California, concentrated in Los Angelas. Some 20,000 are in the San Francisco area, 12,000 in the city itself, mainly crowded into the dreary, crime-ridden section called the Tenderloin, while social workers, welfare officials, add charitable agencies struggle to find them better housing, ' adequate jobs, and facilities: for learning English. The influx creates distressing ‘ problems for the public and private agencies trying to cope with the destitution, disease, and cultural maladjustment of the refugees. Although some are trained, skilled, and fluent in English, by and largp the present arrivals are completely unprepared for life in the United States. An increasing number are farmers or ; unskilled

workers illiterate even in their own languages, and unfamiliar with such amenities as modern plumbing, nappies for babies, dustbins, or kitchen appliances. The United States Public Health Service screens for infectious diseases, but San Francisco officials estimate that only about 10 per cent have adequate examinations. Tuberculosis, veneral disease, skin ailments, and intestinal parasites are among the ailments affecting them, often contracted in the miserable conditions of the refugee camps. Housing the arrivals is a critical problem in San Francisco, where rents are among the highest in the country and vacancies are scarce. Teaching them English has high priority. Most of them have none and can only take the most menial jobs. Funds from a Federal English-teaching programme recently ran out in San Francisco, leaving local authorities to try to make up the difference. Some charitable organisations and agencies share the responsibility for helping the Indo-Chinese. The •destitute are eligible for public welfare funds, but officials say that most of the refugees are eager to find work.

Public acceptance of the refugees is sympathetic,

with a minimum of grumbling, reflected in occasional letters to newspapers from Americans who resent the use of taxes to support immigrants. There have been no incidents of open contention and even violence which have maned the relations between Indo-Chi-nese and Americans in a tew other pans of the country. Californians have reasons to be more sensitive (and more ambivslent, perhaps) about immigtauon than most nen'e teday. Chinese, Filipino and Mexic.m cultures are well established and politically influential, as, to a lesser extent, are Japanese and Islanders. Los Angeles is the second largest Mexican city in the world, its metropolitan area containing an estimated 1.5 million of Mexican birth or heritage, of whom hundreds of thousands came in illegally. At least 10,000 more slip across the border every week. The new Indo-Chinese command high attention because of their present dramatic plight and their unusual cultural dislocation. But in the constanttly changing demography of this state their integration, difficult as it may be at the start, is a familiar and manageable problem,