March 5, 2004 - St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly returned from Thailand where he visited Hmong refugees awaiting relocation to St. Paul and other U.S. cities. The State Department recently declared about 15,000 Hmong refugees eligible to apply for relocation to the U.S., with between 4,000-10,000 Hmong refugees arriving in Minnesota as early as June 2004. Fred de Sam Lazaro, correspondent for PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer based at Twin Cities Public Television, traveled with Kelly to Thailand and prepared this report.
April 28, 2004 - Morning Edition’s Cathy Wurzer talks with MayKao Hung about her recent visit to a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. Hung oversees adult services for Ramsey County and led the assessment team in Thailand.
April 29, 2004 - MPR’s Marisa Helms reports on Ramsey County and St. Paul city officials beginning an education campaign they hope will prepare residents to welcome the newest Minnesotans…1000 to 5000 Hmong refugees that will resettle in the county in the next few months.
June 3, 2004 - By the end of the 2004, the Twin Cities will have nearly 5000 new Hmong residents as they arrive from Thailand. They'll join the more than 20,000 Hmong who began arriving here in the 1970s. While this new wave of refugees will have some obstacles to overcome when they arrive, they'll have some advantages their predecessors never did.
June 21, 2004 - A family of eleven Hmong refugees arrives in Minnesota this evening -- the first of thousands expected to arrive in the next weeks and months. About a third of the 15,000 refugees leaving the Wat Tham Krabok refugee camp in Thailand plan to settle in Minnesota. Another 2,000 will go to Wisconsin. John Borden is associate director of the International Institute -- one of several Twin Cities organizations charged with helping the families settle into their new home. He described for us the world they are leaving.
June 21, 2004 - MPR’s Tom Scheck reports that the first group of Hmong from a refugee camp in Thailand are scheduled to arrive in Minnesota. They are among a group of 15,000 Hmong refugees expected to arrive in the U.S. by the end of 2004. A third of them are expected to settle in St. Paul.
June 22, 2004 - MPR’s Toni Randolph reports on a Chong Thao and his family as they arrive to the Twin Cities. The family had been living at a refugee camp in Thailand for over a decade.
June 25, 2004 - MPR’s Toni Randolph reports that the Hmong refugees who arrived in the Twin Cities earlier in week have begun enrolling their children in school. Seven children were among the 11 refugees who arrived on Monday. Their father brought two of them to the student placement center for the St. Paul public schools to begin the process.
June 28, 2004 - The thousands of Hmong refugees who are expected to arrive in Minnesota will face a major obstacle: learning English. But many English language learning classes are already full in the Twin Cities and have waiting lists. Educators say they're concerned an already stressed system could cause problems for the refugees.
July 5, 2004 - On this Fourth of July weekend, MPR listeners are asked to call in with their stories about coming to America. Caller comments are interspersed between an interview with guest Senator Mee Moua, the first Hmong American elected to State Legislator. She speaks of living in refugee camps in Laos and resettling in the U.S.