Hmong middle-schoolers Kao Lee, left, and Christine Vang are part of one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the state.Culture shock, poverty plague Hmong in Michigan
Yia Yang has dinner with wife Mai Chia Pha at their Ortonville home. "I'm ... mentally back in Laos," says the electronic technician.
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In moving from southeast Asia to southeast Michigan the past few years, the Hmong stepped from the 17th century into the 21st.
Some of these immigrants, unable to speak English or read their own language, struggle with the simplest parts of modern life -- flicking a light switch, turning a faucet.
"It's very hard to adjust to a new community," said Nhia Yang, 45, a Hmong who lives in Sterling Heights. "Many don't have hope anymore."
The Hmong, concentrated in Detroit, Pontiac and Warren, are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in Michigan. Officially, their numbers more than doubled during the 1990s, from 2,300 to 5,400, although group leaders say the population is undercounted and closer to 15,000.
They have turned to schools and social service agencies for help, forcing the financially strained institutions to expand services. Nearly a third of the group lives in poverty.
Even those who are forging successful lives in the United States worry that their culture is quickly slipping away.
Despite the growth of the group, Michigan residents know little about their newest neighbors.
The Hmong, primitive farmers from the mountains of Laos, were recruited by the United States to fight communists during the Vietnam War. They've been around for 5,000 years with customs that date back just as far.
The eldest Hmong (pronounced "mung") believe in spirits, good ones and bad, community members said. Instead of doctors, they go to shamans, who heal them by invoking those spirits. They chase away trouble by sacrificing chickens and hogs inside their homes.
The Hmong "have a defined hierarchy," said Lynn Crotty, director of child development for the Oakland Livingston Human Service Agency. "You work through the men, present everything to them."
The relationship between America and the Hmong was forged during one of the darkest chapters in their histories: the Vietnam War.
During the conflict, U.S. troops were secretly fighting a second war, across the border in Laos. The CIA enlisted the farmers to join the battle.
More than 15,000 Hmong died in the shadow war, historians said. For their military service, they were paid $3 a month.
When the United States withdrew from southeast Asia in 1975, the Hmong were quickly overwhelmed by the communist troops and fled to Thailand. The United States lost its war. The Hmong lost their homeland.
Scary journey from Laos
It's been 30 years but Yia Yang, 39, of Ortonville, has never stopped thinking about his country.
"I told coworkers I'm physically here but mentally back in Laos," the electronic technician said.
Yang was 13 when his family fled to Thailand. Leaving all their possessions behind, they embarked on a three-month journey through the bamboo jungle and across the mile-wide Mekong River.
He remembered coming across body after body of Hmong who had been killed by the communists while trying to escape the country.
"I was scared, pretty scared," he said. "Some areas, can't walk during the day, only at night, so communist soldiers not see you."
He crossed the river on a bamboo raft with 10 family members.
Once on the other side, the Hmong lived in the squalor of a refugee camp in central Thailand without electricity or running water.
Eastpointe resident Xia Lee, who stayed at the camp as a teenager, said the refugees were manhandled by the guards.
"If go out, treat badly so shouldn't go out," she said. "If listened, no punishment. May see many things out there: rob you, hit you."
Lee, 43, came to America in 1980 with the first wave of Hmong to reach U.S. shores. Others came during the '80s and '90s. But others remained at the camp, hoping to return to Laos one day.
Now even the diehards are giving up the dream. When the United States announced last year that it would allow 15,000 more Hmong into the country, they decided to come. Most of the 250,000 Hmong in the United States live in Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
Some of the new arrivals have never had a real home, living their entire lives in refugee camps.
Everything is new
Once the Hmong arrived in Michigan and other states, they presented a tall challenge to schools and social service agencies.
It wasn't that the public institutions had never seen immigrants before, they said. But the Hmong were different. In some ways, they seemed frozen in time.
They struggled not only with the language and culture, but also with the basic elements of modern life.
Electricity and running water were foreign to them. So were most inventions of the 20th century.
Nhia Yang, who came to Michigan in 1995 and is a real estate agent, said the elderly were especially paralyzed.
"Everything new to them," said Yang, who isn't related to Yia Yang. "They're still afraid. Getting lost. Don't know how to spend money. "
Most of the Hmong in southeast Michigan attend the schools in their poor neighborhoods in south Warren, northeast Detroit and downtown Pontiac.
The schools have hired Hmong teachers, trained others in diversity and added language courses and cultural programs, they said.
At Richard Elementary School in Detroit, teachers of Hmong students send notes home in English and their native language. Of the 560 students at Richards, 100 are Hmong.
In Macomb County, the Hmong is the biggest group enrolled in its English-as-Second-Language courses. The community's population in Warren exploded during the 1990s, from 16 to 733. Many came from northeast Detroit, seeking better homes.
It's quite a change for a city that, a decade ago, was 98 percent white, said Ronald Moore, superintendent of the Warren Woods Public Schools in Warren.
"One of our strategic plans is to work on diversity," he said. "It's changing and will keep changing. It's something we'll have to deal with."
Not all the bilingual notes being sent home from Richard Elementary are being read. That's because language remains a tough stumbling block for the Hmong.
They didn't have a written language until the 1950s so it's difficult for many of them to read English or their native language.
A third of the community in Michigan has trouble speaking English, according to the census and school data shows most students are reading under their grade level.
Because of the language barriers, the schools struggle to get parents involved in their children's education.
Getting a job isn't easy
For the Hmong, America is their first taste of freedom in three decades. They can go where they want, do as they please.
In their language, Hmong means "free men."
But the taste of freedom quickly soured with America representing a new form of captivity, an economic one.
With no transportation and few job skills, they do menial work at nearby factories -- if they're lucky enough to get hired. Nearly half the Hmong in Michigan have less than a ninth grade education, according to Kurt Metzger, director of the Center for Urban Studies at Wayne State University.
These strangers in a strange land have sought help from social service agencies, which are already overwhelmed from federal and state cutbacks.
The agencies have hired interpreters to deal with the Hmong, many of whom don't know their age because there's no documentation of their birth.
A single Hmong family represents a sizable expense to a social service agency. The women have one of the highest birth rates in the world, 9.5 children.
Frank Taylor, director of community services for Macomb County, said the agency is training workers to deal with the language and cultural barriers.
"We still have some more work to do," he said. "We're cognizant that we can't do business the way we've done in the past."
Besides the chasm between the Hmong and their American hosts, a second one has appeared within the Hmong community. That one separates the young and old.
The younger Hmong are better able to learn English and serve as interpreters for their parents or grandparents.
But the youth speak the new language with their friends so much that their parents often can't understand their own children.
Knowledge of English also has given the younger generation entry into American culture, and away from their parents' customs and traditions.
"If don't keep culture alive, we will disappear," said Yia Yang, the electronic technician from Ortonville. "Our culture will just disappear. Young won't know where they came from. Won't know what culture they have."
Elders try to hold onto their history by holding elaborate celebrations of the Hmong New Year every fall.
But younger members have been missing from the festivals in recent years.
For a group whose name is synonymous with freedom, liberty means everything to the Hmong, and the price has been nearly as high.
You can reach Francis X. Donnelly at (313) 223-4186 or fdonnelly@detnews.com.
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The Detroit News.
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