Links the failure of the United States’ criminal justice, health, education, and social welfare systems to meet the mounting needs of the country’s refugee population to the rise of both poverty and crime in refugee communities. Asian gangs are difficult to penetrate, prone to extreme violence, and assured of their victims’ unwillingness to risk retaliation by cooperating with the police. The article summarizes the impact of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement in Dallas, Texas, in the absence of critical community-based social services to help refugee families become self-sufficient; offers an explanation for gang membership based on thwarted ambitions; and highlights the experiences of one member of an emerging Laotian street gang in Dallas, which included experiences of discrimination and prejudice and feelings of low self-esteem, diminished social status, and cultural isolation and which culminated in arrest for murder. The stereotype of the overachieving Asian youth has placed an unfair burden upon Asian-American students to excel at all costs, at a time when resources necessary to achieve legitimate success have been diverted. As long as gang membership is the only way youth believe they can be successful, America’s refugee communities will continue to be hostages to fear and further victimization.
