Hmong Select San Joaquin to Sink Roots : Census: Thousands of former refugees from Southeast Asia flocked to the state’s heartland during the 1980s. Many remain on welfare with little hope of getting off, but the young are doing well.

Stooped over her vegetable patch, face tucked against the wet wind, the old woman spares no glance for the low-flying B-52. She has lived with the roar of American bombers a long time, in the Laos highlands and now in San Joaquin Valley almond country.

Her patch of bok choy and onions grows on the edge of Merced, under the flight path of Castle Air Force Base. The long skirt, head scarf and shawl identify her as one of the peasants who is changing cowboy land . Primitive shelters strung together from branches mark her field as a village garden for Southeast Asian refugees.

The decade of the 1980s adjusted the recipe of California’s ethnic stew, and no region absorbed the change as thoroughly as the great San Joaquin, the 1990 census found. As Asians came to outnumber blacks in California, a new look was superimposed on towns across the state’s farming heartland.

The census category of Asians and Pacific Islanders was the fastest-growing ethnic group in the quintessential California heartland towns of Merced and Visalia, Porterville and Bakersfield. Children of parents who speak Hmong or Lao now master the basics of American history and teen-age culture beside the offspring of Armenian grape growers, Basque herders and Mexican field hands.

Refugees began flooding into the valley a decade ago, many after an unhappy winter in Minnesota or Wisconsin. They came not just for the warmth, but to farm the valley’s mythical soil, be reunited with family or take advantage of California’s larger welfare checks.

After a decade of experience, the returns are mixed. Many remain on welfare and appear destined to form a permanent underclass, unlikely to find jobs due to language and lack of experience with modern technology. The elders are viewed as mysterious, prefering shamans to Western doctors.

Most of the 173,000 valley Asians found by the census were born into rural and even tribal Asian culture, mainly Hmong who fought communists in Laos as mercenaries for the CIA in the 1960s and ‘70s. There is also a smattering of Mien, another hill tribe from Laos, lowlands Lao and Cambodian Buddhists.

The children are unusually high achievers in school and some have blended into the mainstream. A Hmong scholar from Fresno recently left to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin and the Fresno Hmong community sent soldiers to the Persian Gulf War.

“They’re getting along reasonably well,” said Michael P. Smith, a UC Davis professor of community studies who prepared a documentary on Merced’s refugees last year. “They’re doing the best they can under the circumstances.”

In Merced, a market city of 56,000 that razed its last Asian community in the 1920s to make way for a highway, the woman in the garden is a sign of new times.

The city cleared the two-acre lot and put in a water system, and the land was cultivated as a village farm by Hmong families in nearby public housing apartments. Around town, the yellow van of the Hmong Christian and Missionary Alliance Church is a common sight beside the pickups, wide American sedans and mud-crusted semitrailers.

A railroad town settled by miners who tapped out of the Gold Rush, modern Merced has a Hmong police officer, a Laotian restaurant and an Asian grocery. About 250 Laotian students attend Merced Community College, which offers courses in the Hmong language.

“People have started to think of Merced as their hometown,” said Houa Vang, 42, who came here eight years ago with his brother and grandfather via Thailand and Hawaii.

The hardships include watching children who don’t remember their ancestral home melding into American culture, Vang said. In the south Merced neighborhood where most refugees live, youths wear the sweat pants and sneakers of California youth and sometimes seem embarrassed by their parents’ halting English and old ways.

Teen-age activities like dating and hanging out strain families used to arranging marriages at a young age. Some boys join gangs and get in trouble with the police.

“We have lots of problems with family conflicts,” Vang said. “People are very upset about these things.”

In the previous census, Merced officially had 569 residents who claimed ethnic roots in Asia. In the ensuing decade, city officials and the Asian community believe, more than 12,000 Southeast Asian refugees moved in--although the 1990 census only managed to count 8,000.

They still come--more than 50 new families in Merced alone last year--from refugee camps in Thailand, other states, and increasingly from France. The town’s population was 14% Asian last April, when the census was taken.

With most on welfare, the Merced County human services department gives taped phone instructions in Hmong. Bilingual Laotians have been hired to work in schools, government offices and in a few businesses.

The new Asians in Merced and other valley towns joined an immigrant culture reflecting the Greeks and Italians who cultivated the soil, the Okies and Texans who fled the Dust Bowl to work the Depression fields and the foreign workers from Basques and Yemenites to the Mexicans and Oaxaquenos who work the fields today.

Ethnic richness is visible in every corner of the San Joaquin map. Yettem was named for the Garden of Eden by Armenian settlers. LaGrange was a French settlement, Kingsburg a Swedish enclave, Allensworth an African-American town.

But with few exceptions--among them the remnants of a Chinatown in Hanford and an aging Filipino community in west Delano--the evidence of early Asian settlements is gone. Chinese workers laid off by the railroads took farm jobs late in the last century but were driven out by lynchings and exclusionary laws after striking for decent wages.

Dennis Kearney, an Irish labor organizer in San Francisco, grew famous in the 1870s for speeches that ended “the Chinese must go!” Japanese came to work fields early in this century but were resented for their farming skill and many were chased away.

Today there is no single Asian center, no Monterey Park or Daly City where Asian-Americans are a majority or nearly so. Stockton, the river port city where Asians have made their biggest mark, was 21% Asian in the census.

Fresno has the most Asians--more than 54,000, the 1990 census found. Hmong there have organized a credit union and funeral home, and the Hmong New Year’s festival at the fairgrounds is a colorful blend of cowboy boots and traditional costumes.

The Wah Wah Supermarket shares a 1950s-style suburban shopping center with Mom’s Dry Cleaning. The gum ball machines, Fresno Bee news racks and displays of Perrier water are those of any Fresno market. But instead of Muzak, a taped crooner sings Asian ballads. Five-pound sacks of dried mushrooms from Japan and half a dozen varieties of rice are for sale, along with Korean tea and remedies. The meat case stocks whole eels and “steamed scomber from Thailand.”

In Merced, 56 miles north on California 99, past almond trees coated with blossoms that make the orchards appear bathed in snow, the social network is not yet so well-developed.

The home of Merced’s refugee community is an old truck depot on 15th Street, across the railroad tracks from the town center. Photos of visiting dignitaries decorate the wall of the Lao Family Center, headquarters for jobs and social contact, as well as for comfort in an alien land.

Staff members help with doctors and unruly children and advise elderly refugees what to do if police knock on the door. A newsletter announces soccer tournament results and the fact that 60 Hmong earned bachelor’s degrees in the United States last year.

An hour of community news is broadcast on a Merced FM station every Sunday morning, starting at 6:30. Not too early, said Vang, the center’s executive director.

“I think most Lao people don’t look at the clock,” Vang said. “They look at the sun.”

Merced, like many towns, is not sure about the newcomers. The town had the fastest-growing Asian population in California in the 1980s. Their arrival inflamed a range of passions, from admiration for those who slid smoothly into mainstream American life to bitterness that after 10 years many are still on welfare.

There have been no incidents like the 1989 Stockton elementary school shooting, when Patrick Edward Purdy sprayed assault-rifle fire that killed five refugee children and wounded 29 people. Purdy then killed himself.

But school fights are common, and tensions occasionally flare up.

“I wish they would just go away,” said Randy Tyler, 27, expressing a common sentiment outside The Branding Iron restaurant.

Hmong efforts at farming are a sore point. Few refugees found prosperity in the soil, having been unable to fit into the milieu of corporate growers, federal irrigation contracts and aerial spraying. The few Hmong who farm use family and simple methods to work their fields, but are resented at the Saturday morning market on Main Street for undercutting prices.

In a valley that treasures its wheels--the cruising culture in the film “American Graffiti” was based on Modesto, 37 miles north--the refugees have another public image problem. They are regarded, not fondly, as famously bad drivers responsible for an unusually high number of tickets and accidents.

The situation became so dire that United Way put up the money for the Lao Family Center to hold classes in traffic rules. About 60 people attend daily.

“Driving is one of our problems,” Vang said.

THE NEXT MELTING POT? The San Joaquin Valley, landing point for Northern European, Hispanic, Armenian and Mediterranean immigrants most of this century, in the 1980s added Asians to the mix. In 1980, blacks had outnumbered Asians in every county. % of 1990 Population 1990 % Change by Ethnic Group County Pop. Since ’80 Anglo Hispanic Asian Black Other Fresno County 667,490 +30% 51% 36% 8% 5% 1% Kern County 543,477 +35 63 28 3 5 1 San Joaquin County 480,628 +38 59 23 12 5 1 Stanislaus County 370,522 +39 71 22 5 2 1 Tulare County 311,921 +27 55 39 4 1 1 Merced County 178,403 +33 54 33 8 4 1 Kings County 101,469 +38 54 34 3 8 1 Madera County 88,090 +40 60 35 1 3 1

Asian Growth in Cities Asian immigration to the San Joaquin Valley was most dramatic in the cities. Here is a look at Asian population figures from 1990 and the percent of growth since 1980 in the largest cities.

% Asian % Asian City Pop. Asian Pop. of Pop. Growth Fresno 354,202 42,211 12% +591% Stockton 210,943 45,239 21 +225 Bakersfield 174,820 5,800 3 +176 Modesto 164,730 12,384 8 +431 Visalia 75,636 4,646 6 +592 Merced 56,216 8,001 14 +1,306 Lodi 51,874 2,327 4 +102

SOURCE: U.S. Census