Dr. Chia Youyee Vang is an associate professor of history and comparative ethnic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and co-author of the new report “Invisible Newcomers.”
Scheduled for release Wednesday, the report, titled “Invisible Newcomers,” explores the educational attainment, socioeconomic challenges, migration and settlement experiences of the Burmese and Bhutanese, who make up the two largest, recent refugee groups in this country. The report’s authors are Dr. Chia Youyee Vang, an associate professor of history and comparative ethnic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Dr. Monica Mong Trieu, an assistant professor of sociology and Asian American studies at Purdue University. It was issued by the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund (APIASF) in collaboration with the Association for Asian American Studies.
Since 2004, more than 80,000 Burmese have arrived in the United States after fleeing political, religious and economic persecution. Bhutanese refugees began coming in 2008 to escape discriminatory social and political rule. The migration of both ethnic groups grew so rapidly that, in 2011, refugees from Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, made up 30 percent and those from Bhutan comprised 26 percent of people resettled in this country.
Calling such statistics “alarming,” Vang and Trieu say that intensive educational and social support should be provided to teens to improve the likelihood of high school completion. Furthermore, the dropout rate among Burmese Americans is almost twice that of the national dropout rate among non-Asians here.
Last summer, the APIASF hosted a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., titled “Enhancing the Adolescent Burmese Refugees’ Access to Higher Education.” The number of Bhutanese and Burmese applicants for APIASF scholarships has nearly tripled since 2011.
“With better information about the needs and experiences of these underserved communities, we hope to increase resources [for] the academic and long-term success of these students,” says APIASF president and executive director Neil Horikoshi. He calls the report “the next step” to better inform policymakers, college leaders and other service providers about two growing communities that are “often overlooked.”
The report offers statistics—such as from the U.S. Census and the Department of Labor—as well as observations from former refugees from Burma and Bhutan who are college-educated and now work to improve the lives of newer arrivals. Much of the federal data about Bhutanese generally isn’t disaggregated from other Asian subgroups, so Vang and Trieu relied heavily on anecdotes for their research.
