Word: nam
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Then in 1965 a new immigration law did away with exclusionary quotas. That brought a surge of largely middle- class Asian professionals - doctors, engineers and academics from Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, India and the Philippines - seeking economic opportunity. In 1975, after the end of the Viet Nam War, 130,000 refugees, mostly from the educated middle class, began arriving. Three years later a second wave of 650,000 Indochinese started their journey from rural and poor areas to refugee camps to the towns and cities of America...
...many do believe there is something in Asian culture that breeds success, perhaps Confucian ideals that stress family values and emphasize education. Sociologist William Liu, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that immigrants from Asian countries with the strongest Confucian influence - Japan, Korea, China and Viet Nam - perform best. "The Confucian ethic," he says, "drives people to work, excel and repay the debt they owe their parents." By comparison, San Diego's Rumbaut points out, Laotians and Cambodians, who do somewhat less well, have a gentler, Buddhist approach to life...
...Viet Nam years, there was not much to laugh at, and comedy was ripe for revolution. The first generation of kids raised on TV, which gobbled up comedy material and spat it out as pabulum, had reached their majority just as the evening news was topping their grisliest nightmare jokes. To be an angry young comic was, it seemed then, to engage psychotic adults on their own terms. The only answer was to drop out of the comic's traditional adversary relationship to power and, instead, parade an anarchic childishness. Their banner might have read HELL...
...foot, the ragged families set out from China's harsh state farms and make their way to the coast. After buying passage with their savings, they sail for Hong Kong. For the second time in eight years, they are refugees. Viet Nam expelled them first; now China has rejected them...
...luckless travelers are ethnic Chinese raised in Viet Nam. In the months leading up to Hanoi's 1979 war with Peking, more than 280,000 of them sought sanctuary in southern China after being ordered out of Viet Nam. Never really accepted in China, many were exploited by the country's prospering rural entrepreneurs...