Indochinese Resettlement in the United States

Recently there has been a dramatic increase in the flow of Southeast Asian refugees into the U.S., and these refugees are becoming increasingly concentrated in a small number of Western states. This distribution is the result of the refugees’high interstate mobility and of the family reunification criterion used to admit and resettle refugees. The states in which the refugees are concentrating tend to have high public assistance benefit levels, lenient public assistance eligibility requirements, large Asian communities, mild winters, and low unemployment rates. This unplanned spatial clustering of the refugee population calls into question the effectiveness and the desirability of the original dispersal policy.