These people were mostly professionals and intellectuals from the upper and middle classes that already could speak English as well as French. They avoided the murder of the Khmer Rouge in its early days of terror. Later on, in 1978 and 1979, those that escaped the “productivity farms” were less educated and had farms before the genocide came to America. After Pol Pot was toppled, the United States took about twenty thousand of the weary huddles masses of a destroyed Cambodia a year. Not speaking English, these people had a harder time transitioning and assimilating. These Cambodian immigrants tended to cluster to places with similar climates to their home and with each other in order to preserve their traditions and culture. The peak of population is Long Beach, CA, somewhere between thirty-five to fifty thousand. A city with a strong Cambodian presence, is, of course, Lowell, …show more content…
Most of these kids, once they had been back home in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge were in power, brought their families and loved ones to the same part of Long Beach. This established a Khmer community and eventually brought many Cambodians there post-genocide. Cambodians liked Lowell because of its policies for refugees, a temple in North Chelmsford for Theravada Buddhists that was headed by a Cambodian monk, and a ton of jobs available. Many of these jobs were with businesses that built the early consumers’ personal computers in the early eighties. Sucheng Chen says that KItty Dukakis (wife MA Governor Mike Dukakis) pledged to help out the Khmer refugees as a lobbyist. Subsidized houses were provided by Massachusetts local government. Despite their and their families’ suffering, those affected by the Khmer Rouge’s terror have found a new home and a new place to re-establish community and culture, starting businesses and opening restaurants such as Simply Khmer. These families that were originally refugees have made their mark and many have made their own success on