A follow-up on those 1500 Cambodians who were deported, in what immigration observers agreed was a bizarre and tragic case of systems failure: Cambodia was deemed recovered enough to handle its own criminals. In a series of three-strikes-you're-out type rulings against immigrants who had never bothered (or been unable to) take U.S. citizenship, judges across Cambodian enclaves in the U.S. were all of a sudden ordering exile for people --most, former refugees-- with 20-year histories in America. As many of the initial reports mentioned, none of the deportees were saints, but many articles questioned the idea of sending people back to a country they barely knew as a remedy for social maladjustments here. (See an overview, an early report.)
A report this week in the Seattle Times finds one of the deportees two and a half years later, in a "remote village" where his distant relatives had taken him in. It's one of many reports covering the wake of a blinkered policy.
I had seen the deportees starting to arrive in Phnom Penh in 2002. Many of them landed at a the home of Bill Herod, who ran an impromptu shelter originally called RAP, or Return Assistance Project. That has since evolved into RISP, the Return Integration Support Program, funded by Vietnam Vets and US AID. Their website is worth exploring: it's a phenomenal record of displacement and fate. They have archived the extensive press coverage.
RISP offers a survival guide, but each deportee assumes his fate differently. In the photo gallery:
several returnees have become monks
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