Hmong American Mutual Assistance Association

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Hmong people were always known as hard-workers in their home country. However, after being uprooted, spending years in the “suspended life” of the refugee camps in Thailand, and finding themselves in a place so very different -- culturally, socially, and economically -- many are experiencing great difficulty in becoming self-sufficient. Despite the Community strengths and cultural values we as refugees brought from Laos, cultural and linguistic barriers, racism, and a lack of formal education have made the transition to this country difficult. These difficulties are evident from the statistics about the reality of life in the United States at this time:
? Seventy percent of Hmong families in Hennepin County live at or below the poverty level;
? More than two-thirds of adults are not in the permanent labor force and the recent September 11 Tragedy and impact on the marketplace has reinforced the precarious nature of employment;
? Almost half of Hmong adults speak little or no English, and more than 40 percent have no formal education at all in spite of 20 years resettlement in America; and;
? More than half of all Hmong adults are illiterate in their own language.
Consequently, over 70 percent of Hmong households receive some form of public assistance.

This is the highest rate among all Southeast Asian refugee groups in the Twin Cities area. 1990 Census data also indicates that only one-third (29.9 percent) of the Hmong people over age 17 years are employed. This is a vital statistic for our Hmong Community given the traditionally young ages at which Hmong unions are made. Yet we can find no more current numbers nor can we build a case for greater employment of young Hmong based on Community meetings during the past two years where the term “dropout” has taken on a new and greater meaning as one would define “dropping out of the life” patterns. And even when the young Hmong are employed, most of the jobs are in low-paying positions that cannot adequately support a family.

With the implementation of Welfare Reform, which is placing serious pressure on the Hmong adults to seek economic self-sufficiency, many in the Hmong-Minnesota Community are facing a drastic reduction in public assistance and sanctions for failure to secure employment for which they are poorly prepared. Yet most of the Hmong possess native job skills that are not highly valued in this country, and find themselves in low-paying positions that cannot adequately support a family. Although compiled for all welfare recipients, the documentation available to date as presented by the Institute for Research on Poverty demonstrates that “…entry level jobs available to workers without a college degree…required credentials (high school diploma, work experience, references) that many recipients did not have. For example, about half of all welfare recipients are high school dropouts, and about 40 percent have had no experience prior to their first welfare spell.” We concur as a result of our Employment section canvas of the City of Minneapolis business base during the latter half of 2001. In our effort out of 1,512 firms, 315 of all manufacturing and service categories (the highest probability for near term employment of Hmong and Laotian clients) were queried at length concerning hiring policies, personnel needs and hiring plans for the 2001/2002 timeframe. The results were dismal: 55 firms had recently laid off personnel, 31 companies were on furlough, 45 companies agreed to receive an application but with hiring freeze in place, and 184 firms refused either to receive applications or hire under any circumstances.

To this problem is added a large majority of our Hmong working age population that suffers from extremely limited education and very low English proficiency, making initial job location and retention, let alone on-the-job advancement opportunities extremely limited as well. The State of Minnesota report on the December 2000 Characteristics of Racial/Ethnic and Immigrant Groups in the Minnesota Family Investment Program relates that only 20 percent of Asian families participating had achieved high school graduation, while 56 percent reported no education at all. A year 2001 HAMAA initiative to establish a coordination activity for the recruitment and training, on site or in concert with post secondary educational institutes of Hmong high school graduates pursuing a health service career resulted in virtually no qualified candidates. Notably, the diplomas or GEDs possessed by the applicants belied a reading and writing ability below that of a typical ninth grade student per the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests. We concur with the Hennepin County assessment “Many families remaining on MFIP have barriers to achieving self-sufficiency, such as physical and/or mental health problems, learning disabilities, little or no education or work experience, or lack English proficiency.” Nowhere is this truer than for our Hmong Community.

To this is added the difficulties of the present economic downturn initiated through the implosion of the “dot-coms” and their high-technology-based industrial partners (including such firms as Advanced Circuits, Honeywell, 3M and ADC Telecommunications in the Twin Cities area) in February of this year, then greatly accelerated by the 9-11 disaster at the World Trade Towers in the summer of 2001. Again, in looking at general trends, we find in Employer Demand for Welfare Recipients and the Business Cycle: Evidence from Recent Employer Surveys the basic status of our Hmong employees when we observe “…the cycle for other disadvantaged groups might differ considerably from what welfare recipients will experience. For any given cyclical downturn, the magnitude of the decline in labor demand faced by recipients might be greater or lesser than for other groups that have comparable levels of education but perhaps different levels of cognitive ability and work experience.” And indeed, this downturn suggests that our Hmong Community will suffer severely. At the period October 2000 our HAMAA holding accounts for job applicants numbered no more than 100 files. For the same period in 2001, we number over 525 applicants with more arriving every day. This in spite of monumental efforts to place over 200 applicants in new employment positions within the reporting period.

Continuing our look at the typical Hmong family on public assistance, we find State figures again that build a fair composite for Hennepin County. Of 1,810 Hmong families on MFIP assistance, some 86 percent (c.1,556) of families maintained eligible participants, with 1,320 families represented showing 27 percent with two eligible caregivers (one of whom was often on SSI) and nearly 60 percent of the families possessing two caregivers. By extension, nearly 400 of these Hmong families reside in Hennepin County. Fortunately, the number of Hmong employed has grown substantially from the 1990 Census recorded low of 34 percent to a rough calculation of 73 percent employed by June 2001.

Naturally, these figures reflect employment as a net result of not seeking public financial assistance and include a fair portion of young Hmong (ages 20-25 years) who by our evaluation have simply dropped out of all economic sector activity just as they have abandoned the schools. Thus, while the draw on public funds has noticeably dropped in the past several years, the actual income of Hmong families has grown only marginally. According to the Urban Institute, in Minneapolis 55.2 percent of Asian Pacific American households have clustered in the central city, which in turn describes 87.6 percent of those residents by income measures as “very poor.” Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support, in the report series Health Disparities in Minneapolis Update, relates that 80 percent of students of color qualify for reduced price student lunches.

This nonsequitur between rising employment and apparent continued poverty may be explained as a matter of the majority of our Hmong employees of all ages continuing to seek employment through “temporary jobs” with the potential advancement to a simple, though permanent “assembly” job. These positions often require limited English and technical skills, excluding the coveted medical assembly positions which offer higher wages but at the entrance price of a true diploma-based English ability. The reality then is that the entry-level positions available to those with limited language and job skills seldom pay more than Twin Cities minimum wage, averaging $6.50 per hour. Yet through planning and career counseling, our HAMAA Employment Counselors have located hundreds of positions based on qualifications, with the net result that average employment entry positions (especially for MFIP limited qualified clients) are charged at $8.50 per hour and the average wage for all clients placed in 2001 stands at $9.62 per hour as long as education agreements are adhered to by the clients.

According to Hennepin County figures, the low end of income for county residents primarily employed within the agriculture and services industries should average $24,000. Yet at our average annual wage, our families derive $20,000 full-time employment per adult. Southeast Asian immigrants, particularly our Hmong, are often married with an average of six or more children. With both heads of the household working in entry level positions (with additionally middle-aged females often possessing very limited English skills and no education earning at the minimum level), and most recent home purchases with hefty monthly mortgage payments, their combined salaries do not lift the family out of their need for some form of public assistance. Often an eldest child must also work to ensure that the family can make ends meet at the cost of the college or trade school education and most disturbingly even at cost to high school diplomas. Even when the families elect this terrible path, they struggle. This is particularly alarming since the current welfare reform rules require assistance to expire in five-year time limits.

In sum, we must state that the employment and family income problem for our Hmong is really much more than just the lack of skills and knowledge; it is the lack of hope, and the gradual acceptance of poor or self-limiting choices, such as public assistance. This perspective is permeating all levels of the Hmong society in Minnesota.

This nonsequitur between rising employment and apparent continued poverty may be explained as a matter of the majority of our Hmong employees of all ages continuing to seek employment through “temporary jobs” with the potential advancement to a simple, though permanent “assembly” job. These positions often require limited English and technical skills, excluding the coveted medical assembly positions which offer higher wages but at the entrance price of a true diploma-based English ability. The reality then is that the entry level positions available to those with limited language and job skills seldom pay more than Twin Cities minimum wage, averaging $6.50 per hour. Yet through planning and career counseling, our HAMAA Employment Counselors have located hundreds of positions based on qualifications, with the net result that average employment entry positions (especially for MFIP limited qualified clients) are charged at $8.50 per hour and the average wage for all clients placed in 2001 stands at $9.62 per hour as long as education agreements are adhered to by the clients.