I teach part time as an Adjunct Professor at a small community college in Florida. You can always tell what the main immigrant cohorts are because they’ll show up in your classes. :Lately a lot of south Americans, before 9/11 a fair amount of Muslem (oddly, mainly women). Eastern Europeans and Russians after the wall came down. Before them the Vietnamese.

The Vietnamese were by far the poorest of all the immigrant groups. You could tell by the threadbare clothes they wore. A lot of them barely spoke English. They pretty much put their own support groups together and struggled through the classes in the strange land. How they did it I’ll never know.

I few years ago I noticed another wave of Vietnamese on the campus. Only they were taller, well fed and well dressed. They acted like regular goofy American teens. The Melting Pot in action. I wonder if they ever understood just what it was their parents went through for them?

As for the poster above who begrudges them their flight. I don’t.