How Southeast Asian American refugees helped shape America's resettlement system

2020 is the 45th anniversary of Southeast Asian American refugees' arrival in the U.S., still the largest group to be resettled since then.

Two days before the end of the Vietnam War, Le Xuan Khoa boarded a plane with his family to start a new life in the United States. He'd had a comfortable life in South Vietnam. He was the vice president of the University of Saigon and had served as the country's deputy minister of culture and education. But as the North Vietnamese came closer to claiming victory, he knew he had to leave. Given his high-ranking positions, he was certain that if he stayed, he would have been sent to a re-education camp where he would have been subject to grueling hours of labor, poor health care and…

saved by

• Jasjit Hargun

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