By Yitzi Weiner
September 2, 2019

In some of the refugee camps, there had been English lessons, but you had to pay for them. We didn’t have any money, so I hid outside the classroom at the refugee camp and listened through the window...

I grew up in a very poor family in Battambang City, in the northwest part of Cambodia. My mother was a seamstress and my father was a soldier in the Cambodia army until the Khmer rouge took over the country on April 17, 1975, when I was nine years old. They killed my father, his older brother, and a few other family members and friends.

There was always gun fighting, day and night. The last gun fight we were near lasted about three days and three nights. My mother and I couldn’t move or raise our heads above the ground. On the fourth day, when the fighting stopped, a refugee relief organization picked us up and moved us to the very first refugee camp for Cambodians in Thailand, called Khao-I-Dang. When it got crowded they moved us deeper into Thailand to another camp.

I have a younger sister who stayed in Cambodia. We separated in 1979. She stayed with my grandmother while my mother and my older sister and I crossed the border on foot trying to make money to support my family. When we were taken to the first camp, we couldn’t go back. We lost touch with her for many years, but we reconnected and I’ve visited with her when I returned to Cambodia on trips in 2012 and 2015.

I told my mother that If I am going to live in this country, I have to learn how to speak English, and I did. While working many, many low-wage jobs, I studied hard. I eventually graduated from high school in Maryland. I attended community colleges and ultimately graduated from Widener University, near Philadelphia, in my early thirties.

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"America is the land of opportunity. I love this country. The U.S. has always been the world’s melting pot, and I feel very fortunate to live here and contribute. I also think it is good that there are more women in power in America, and that will continue to make us a strong nation."

I take it he means he is proud to pay his fair share of taxes and respects people of other ethnicities. These are the kind of people America needs, not the ones that complain about how high their taxes are and that someone else speaks Spanish. He serves his country, he became a real American. Good for him, much respect