Cambodian Americans
Cambodian Americans at a New Year celebration, 2010
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| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (330,259 (ancestry or ethnic origin, 2015)) |
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| Regions with significant populations | |
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| Languages | |
| Khmer, American English, Cham | |
| Religion | |
 Theravada Buddhism
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| Related ethnic groups | |
| Khmer people, Vietnamese Cambodians, Chinese Cambodians, Southeast Asian Americans, Asian Americans |
Cambodian Americans are Americans born or raised in (or descended from those born or raised in) Cambodia, the majority of which are of Khmer descent. Other ethnicities in the U.S. native to Cambodia—including Chinese Cambodians, Vietnamese Cambodians, and Cham people—are also Cambodian Americans.
As of the 2010 U.S. Census, there are 276,667 people of Cambodian descent living in the United States. The Cambodian population is concentrated in the states of California and Massachusetts.
Prior to 1975, most of the few Cambodians in the United States were children of upper income families or those having government-funded scholarships sent abroad to attend school. There was no history of immigration from Cambodia into the United States. After the fall of Phnom Penh to the communist Khmer Rouge in 1975, a few Cambodians managed to escape, but not until the Khmer Rouge was overthrown in 1979 did large waves of Cambodians began immigrating to the United States as refugees. Between 1975 and 1994, nearly 158,000 Cambodians were admitted into the United States. About 149,000 of them entered the country as refugees, whereas approximately 6,000 entered as immigrants and 2,500 as humanitarian and public interest parolees. In order to encourage rapid assimilation into American culture and to spread the economic impact, the U.S. government settled the refugees in various towns and cities throughout the country. However, once established enough to be able to communicate and travel, many Cambodians began migrating within the U.S. to certain localities where the climate was more like home, where they knew friends and relatives had been sent, or where there were rumored to be familiar jobs or higher government benefits. Consequently, large communities of Cambodians took root in cities such as Long Beach, Fresno and in California;Providence, Rhode Island; Cleveland, Ohio; as well as Lynn and Lowell in Massachusetts; and Seattle and Portland in the Pacific Northwest.
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Wikipedia