New Collection

SEARAC, the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center in Washington D.C., has donated nine boxes of materials, including correspondence, government documents, symposium and conference papers, periodicals, newspaper and journal articles, to the Southeast Asian Archive. SEARAC was founded in 1979 as the Indochina Refugee Action Center (IRAC), with the purpose of facilitating the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees into American society and aiding in the development of Southeast Asian American non-profit organizations led by and for the refugees. The material donated to the Archive covers the time period from 1979 through the mid-1990s, and includes such topics as refugee admissions and sponsorship, refugee camps, the situation of the Vietnamese boat people, e.g., piracy, repatriation; post-resettlement issues such as employment, health, education; Southeast Asian refugee organizations in the U.S. and in other resettlement countries; conditions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

We are delighted to have this collection as it fills in important gaps for the SEA Archive and portrays the activities of one of the most active and oldest South-east Asian ethnic non-profit organizations in the U.S.