The warmest welcome I ever saw the Hmong receive was a Naturalization

Ceremony, held in the boardroom of the Merced County Administrative Building,

in which eighteen Hmong—as well as two lowland Lao, nine Mexicans, five

Portuguese, three Filipinos, two Vietnamese, two Indians, a Thai, a Korean, a

Chinese, an Austrian, and a Cuban—became American citizens. Each received a

copy of the Constitution, a history of the Pledge of Allegiance, a picture of the

Statue of Liberty, a congratulatory letter from the President of the United States,

a little American flag, and—courtesy of Lodge No. 1240 of the Benevolent and

Protective Order of Elks—unlimited free soft drinks. Standing next to a mounted

copy of the Merced county song (“We are known for sweet potatoes And milk

and chickens too Tomatoes and alfalfa / And almonds great to chew”), Judge

Michael Hider told the assembled multitude, many of whom could not

understand a word but listened respectfully nonetheless, “We’ve all come

together from many places to form one great country—including myself, for my

father was a naturalized citizen who came from Lebanon. In America, you don’t

have to worry about police breaking down your doors. You can practice any

religion you want. There’s such complete freedom of the press that our

newspapers can even attack our leaders. If the government feels they need your

land, they cannot just take it away from you. Most importantly, every one of you

has the same opportunity as the person sitting next to you. My father never

could have dreamed that his son would be a judge. Your children can be doctors.

I just get carried away when I talk about how wonderful it is to be a citizen of

the United States! Congratulations! You’re one of us!” But while I was listening

to Judge Hider, I thought of a conversation I had had not long before with Dr.

Robert Small, the unfalteringly opinionated MCMC obstetrician, whose views are

shared by a large segment of Merced’s population. “I and my friends were

outraged when the Hmong started coming here,” he told me. “Outraged. Our

government, without any advice or consent, just brought these nonworking

people into our society. Why should we get them over anybody else? I’ve got a

young Irish friend who wants to get a U.S. education and wants to work. He

can’t get in. But these Hmong just kind of fly here in groups and settle like

locusts. They know no shame, being on the dole. They’re happy here.” When I

mentioned the high rate of depression among Hmong refugees, Dr. Small said,

“What do you mean? This is heaven for them! They have a toilet they can poop

in. They can drink water from an open faucet. They get regular checks and they

never have to work. It’s absolute heaven for these people, poor souls.” I had

also spoken with the more temperate John Cullen, director of the Merced Human

Services Agency, which administers public assistance. “Merced has been a fairly

conservative, WASPy community for many years,” he said. “The other

nationalities that are part of our community came here over a long period of

time, but the Hmong came in one big rush. They were a jolt to the system. That

inevitably causes more of a reaction. And they do take more than their share of

the county’s income. You can’t deny that the county has been seriously,

seriously impacted. I think Merced’s reaction to the Hmong is a matter of water

swamping the boat, not a matter of racism.” On occasion, however, it is a

matter of racism. One day Dang Moua was walking out of his grocery store, the

Moua Oriental Food Market, when a man he had never seen before drove by and

started yelling at him. “He is maybe forty-year-old person,” recalled Dang. “He is

driving ’84 Datsun. He say to me, Shit man, why you come to this country? Why

didn’t you die in Vietnam? Well, my father always say to me, if someone act like

a beast to you, you must act like a person to him. So I try to smile and be nice.

I say, I’m a citizen just like you are. I say, Give me your phone number, you
come to my house and eat Hmong food and we talk two or three hour. But he

run away. Maybe he is veteran and he convince I am enemy.” Dang’s hypothesis

is not as farfetched as it sounds. Many people in Merced have confused the

Hmong with the Vietnamese—including the former mayor, Marvin Wells, who

once informed a Chamber of Commerce luncheon that the “Vietnam refugees” in

California were “a problem.” It is not uncommon to hear the Hmong called “boat

people,” although Laos is landlocked, and the only boat most Hmong are likely to

have seen was the bamboo raft on which they floated, under fire, across the

Mekong River. At least the real boat people, the former South Vietnamese, were

United States allies. A more unsettling assumption was revealed by the MCMC

maintenance man who, conflating the Hmong with the Vietcong, told Dave

Schneider that the hospital was patronized by “too many gooks.” Over and over

again, the Hmong here take pains to explain that they fought for the United

States, not against it. Dang Moua is a one-man public-relations outfit, constantly

hauling out an old National Geographic with a picture of his uncle in a military

uniform, or popping a videotape about the Armée Clandestine into his VCR. One

man from a nearby Central Valley town made sure that even after his death

there could be no mistake about his past. His tombstone in the Tollhouse

Cemetery northeast of Fresno—where dozens of Hmong, reminded of Laos by

the hilly topography, chose to be buried until local residents started complaining

about their loud funerals—reads: BELOVED FATHER AND GRANDFATHER CHUA

CHA CHA APRIL 20, 1936 FEBRUARY 27, 1989 HE SERVED FOR THE C.I.A. FROM

1961 TO 1975 In 1994, there was a demonstration in Fresno by Hmong welfare

recipients, many of whom were former soldiers, protesting a new requirement

that they work sixteen hours a week in public service jobs, which they called

“slavery.” Like older Hmong across the country who still believed in “The
Promise”—the CIA’s alleged compensation contract—they assumed that aid with

no strings attached was no more than their proper due. They expected the

Americans to be grateful for their military service; the Americans expected them

to be grateful for their money; and each resented the other for not acting

beholden. In the Director’s Conference Room at the Merced Human Services

Agency, there hangs a huge paj ntaub that tells the story of the end of the war

in Laos. In a series of embroidered and appliquéd images, Hmong families try to

crowd into four American airplanes at Long Tieng, walk to Thailand carrying

huge loads on their backs, attempt to swim across a wide river, settle in Ban

Vinai, and, finally, load their belongings onto a bus that will take them to an

airplane bound for the United States. Across from the paj ntaub there is a

computer from which the welfare files of thousands of Hmong can be accessed.

The Lees, like many Hmong families whose records have been kept here, are

intimately familiar with the grief chronicled by the paj ntaub but oblivious to the

anger induced by the computer files. When I asked Foua and Nao Kao how they

felt about being on welfare, Foua said, “I am afraid the welfare will go away. I

am afraid to look for a job because I am afraid I could not do it. I am afraid we

would not have food to eat.” Nao Kao said, “In Laos we had our own animals and

our own farm and our own house, and then we had to come to this country, and

we are poor and we have to have welfare, and we have no animals and no farm,

and that makes me think a lot about our past.” Neither of them said a word

about what Americans might think of them for not working. For them, that was

not the issue. The issue was why the American War had forced them to leave

Laos and, via a reluctant trajectory that would have been unimaginable to their

parents or their parents’ parents, wind up in, of all places, Merced.