Deportees from US struggle for acceptance in Cambodia

21 March 2012
Ellie Dyer

Phnom Penh (dpa) – Bunnoeun Ong landed at Phnom Penh airport with 11 dollars in his pocket. He had no family, no friends and no shelter in Cambodia. One thing was certain: he could not return to the United States.

The 31-year-old television repairman from Chicago, convicted of attempted home invasion, is one of a growing number of criminals deported to Cambodia each year by US authorities since a repatriation agreement was signed a decade ago.

Although many US citizens support such action, the legacy of the deadly 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime has left some of those sent “home” in an alien world.

Many deportees in their 20s and early 30s were born in Thai refugee camps after their families fled the violence of Cambodia. They arrive now in the capital Phnom Penh with little to no native language skills, having never set foot in the country before.

Q&A: Cambodian deportee’s wife talks about moving back to her homeland

Marley Dang, the 3-year-old son of a local Cambodian awaiting deportation. (Photo: Vyreak Sovan)

Friday, October 15th, 2010
Posted by Holly Otterbein
Philadelphia CityPaper (Pennsylvania, USA)

Last week, I wrote about Mout Iv, a Cambodian refugee, Olney denizen and American permanent resident for the last 24 years, who was awaiting deportation — and other local Cambodians like him, who have been deported recently because of criminal convictions (a fact that fits squarely into President Obama's immigration policy aimed at deporting more people with criminal backgrounds, regardless of how old their convictions are or whether they're refugees, apparently).

After the story went to print, I interviewed a Cambodian refugee named Lynn, who lived most of her life in Philadelphia, until her husband, Saul, was deported to Cambodia in 2007 for a crime he committed 10 years prior. His crime was theft by stolen property; according to Lynn, he bought a stolen car from a friend. Saul came to the U.S. when he was 3 years old, and Lynn was 4 months old when she landed here. They now live in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Lynn told me, "I am not very good with details or my feelings," but still agreed to talk. This is my interview with her:

City Paper: Why did you decide to move to Cambodia with Saul? Not every wife does.

Lynn: My husband was deported on June 24, 2007 … a couple weeks later my daughter was born. I never really thought that he was going to get deported because there were rumors that Cambodia wasn't accepting people back and then when it happened, I was kind of in shock. During his deportation process, I already knew I was coming to Cambodia. In January 2008, my children and I arrived in Cambodia. I moved to Cambodia because I wanted my children to be with their father, and I wanted my husband and daughter to meet each other.

CP: More than 30 percent of Cambodians live below the poverty line. Have you found work there?

Lynn: There are not many jobs opportunities here. It is hard for my husband to find a job. I can find one easier than him because of my passport. There is a lot of poverty. Majority of the people is trying to make it through the day. The government doesn't give assistance.

CP: During your husband's deportation process, did you find your lawyer helpful? And what about the lawyer your husband dealt with during his '97 conviction?

Lynn: [During his trial], he pleaded guilty to get a lesser sentence and his [public defender] didn't explain to him that it can get him deported. … After his back judge gave him early parole, immigration picked my husband in December 2003 and took him to York. There we hired an immigration lawyer who took our money and didn't do anything for us. The lawyer told my husband that if he signed out and they don't deport him within six months, they will release him, so my husband signed out. He had to report to ICE once a month. To make a long story short, ICE picked him up on January 2007 and started his deportation process.

CP: Do you speak the language?

Lynn: We speak enough Khmer to communicate with the locals. Sometimes they have trouble understanding us and we have trouble understanding them.

CP: After living in Philly for so long, what has Phnom Penh been like?

Lynn: Living here is different. My first couple of months, I experienced culture shock and it can get pretty lonely without family and friends. The life here is really slow-paced so we get to spend more time with each other. My feelings toward living here is Cambodia is [it's] a fun country to visit, but to live here is a whole different story — especially if you have family somewhere else. Both of our immediate family is still in the states. Our parents, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and his kids from his previous marriage.

Returnee NGO faces closure

Sochet, a returnee from the US, describes his transition to Cambodia during an interview yesterday at the Returnee Integration Support Centre in Phnom Penh. (Photo by: Rick Valenzuela)

Wednesday, 01 September 2010
Brooke Lewis and Vong Sokheng
The Phnom Penh Post

THE executive director of an NGO that is the first point of contact for many Cambodians deported from the United States said yesterday that members of its board would meet this month to discuss closing the organisation because of a lack of funding.

“I’m setting up a board meeting in September,” Kloeung Aun said. “If we can’t find funding, we’ll close.”

The announcement came one day after officials said at least 10 Cambodians who had been living in the US would arrive in the Kingdom after being deported. They were among almost 50 awaiting deportation.

All the returnees are former legal permanent US residents who have served prison sentences for aggravated felonies, a classification that was expanded in 1996 to include some crimes that were previously misdemeanours.

A total of 229 Cambodian nationals have been deported from the US since a controversial bilateral repatriation agreement was signed in 2002.

Kloeung Aun said yesterday that the Returnee Integration Support Centre, an NGO based in the capital, meets all returnees at an Immigration Department facility where they are held upon arrival.

He said that the RISC could sign for the release of returnees who had no family or friends to collect them from the immigration centre, and offered them temporary accommodation and support in obtaining identification such as passports and family books.

He said the closure of the RISC would mean “great hardship” for many returnees, especially those who would not know anyone upon arriving in the Kingdom.

“I don’t know where they would go,” he said.

The US embassy in Phnom Penh and Koy Kuong, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on Monday that at least 10 returnees were expected to arrive on Tuesday.

Yesterday, however, both Koy Kuong and the US embassy said they had received no further information, and could not confirm when the returnees would arrive.

Chhuor Kimny, chief of immigration police at Phnom Penh International Airport, said yesterday that no returnees had arrived, and that an unspecified number were scheduled to arrive on Thursday.

Officials at the Immigration Department referred questions to National Police spokesman Kirt Chantharith, who could not be reached for comment.

Three recent returnees said yesterday that the RISC had provided invaluable support as they struggled to adjust to life in a country that was completely foreign to them.

A 31-year-old returnee who identified himself as Veasna said he left the Kingdom when he was a year old, and that he hadn’t known anyone or had any identification documents when he arrived last December.

He stayed at the RISC for the first month after his arrival, and said he still relies heavily on the centre despite having found a place of his own.
“RISC is everything for us,” he said. “This is where I come to every day. If RISC closes, where am I gonna go?”

A 35-year-old returnee who identified himself as Sochet said he left Cambodia when he was four, and didn’t know anyone when he returned early this year. He said that as well as practical support, the RISC offers a sense of belonging.

“The [US immigration and naturalisation service] say we’re citizens of Cambodia now, but the people here don’t treat us like that; they treat us like any foreigner who comes to this country,” he said. “I come here sometimes because all the guys here I can relate to and talk to and they can help me out.”

A 26-year-old returnee who identified himself as Sam said he was deported to Cambodia about a year ago and also didn’t know anyone when he arrived.

“I was born in a refugee camp in Thailand,” he said. “I’d never even been to Cambodia. This is my first time.”

He said he had felt like an ordinary US citizen, and that deportation to Cambodia had come as a shock.

“I was living a normal, everyday US life. I went through the whole school system,” he said. “I feel like they threw me here to rot.”

Deported... Returned...

September 13, 2009
By Stéphane Janin
http://khmerabroad.blogspot.com

There are currently 212 returnees who have been deported since 2002, as they have encountered the American justice system in a time where they lacked the American citizenship. If a few of them have succeeded getting good jobs, most returnees don’t have the chance to be in a great positive mood. Some face real physical or health concerns, sometimes crippled by malnutrition, others face psychological issues or depression, some can end up in the streets, weak, vulnerable and often the victim of violent crime. Intolerable situation certainly, but the cause mostly lack financial support. The Returnee Integration Support Center (RISC) in Phnom Penh has seen his funding really diminished these last years (USAID withdrew support for the project) and can only do its best with a diminishing staff to provide a place for these Returnees and help them with housing, health, education and most of all finding a job. From Massachussets, an American organization – “Deported Diaspora”, http://www.deporteddiaspora.org/ – tries to support deported people and advocate on that problem.

In the 1980s, the American government has welcomed some 145 000 Cambodians, most of them from the different refugees camps of the Thai border. For some of the children of these Cambodian refugees, America has sometimes played unwanted tricks, taking advantage some twenty years later of their lacking the American citizenship: in March 2002, the United States signed a deportation agreement with Cambodia.

Since then deportation back to Cambodia has become the fate of more than 200 Cambodian Americans (212 to this day) who had encountered the American justice system. Many of the deported are people who left Cambodia as babies or young children or who were born in the Thai refugee camps, having never touched Cambodian soil in their entire lives. They’re from California, Massachussets, Minnesota, Texas, Florida and other places in the US where Cambodians have gathered. And they will never be allowed to go back to America, even for a short family visit!

Unlike the integration of others Asian nationalities, the integration of Cambodians to the American life has not always been easy. Many surveys in the last decade show that Cambodians usually have some of the worst rates in terms of poverty living, access to American citizenship, access to college studies, use of the English language…

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