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By 1985, her nonprofit, the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees (MVRCR), had processed some 2,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Haitian and Polish émigrés. Utica, it turned out, was in many ways a perfect place for refugees to start over. Because of the city's history of immigration, residents were welcoming toward newcomers. "And the low housing costs were a real advantage," says Douglas. "We could put families into very nice housing for not much."Though many of the skilled manufacturing jobs were gone, there was still enough entry-level work for the immigrants to gain a fingerhold on the American Dream. And without the labor pool provided by the new workers, many of those smaller Utica companies might have disappeared along with the larger corporations. Donald Chichester manages the second shift at Keymark Corporation's Keyano division, an aluminum extrusion facility outside the city. Fully half of the division's workforce consists of refugees, he says, many from Somalia. "They're the most motivated workers I've ever seen," he adds.
One of the earliest arrivals in Utica was a Cambodian named Synath Buth. When Communist dictator Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime seized power in 1975, it unleashed a nightmare of violence, forced labor and starvation. Buth somehow made it through the next four years, though 36 of his relatives, including his father, did not. "The situation was very tough," he remembers. "I would go farther every day trying to find food for my family, and if you get caught by the Khmer, they can kill you."
During those years, Buth married a woman named Saram; when they decided to leave Cambodia in 1979, she was nine months pregnant with their second child. Walking to Thailand, Buth says, "if you step on the wrong place, you're blown up by the land mine. We'd see all the dead bodies lying on the ground." In the jungle, his wife gave birth to a daughter, Saramoroth.
Fenced for two years inside refugee camps in Thailand, the couple had a third child. Then the UN told Buth that he and his family were to be resettled in the United States. Through old movies and books, Buth had already fallen in love with the country; he was ecstatic. Standing in the airport near Utica on chilly November 11, 1981, wearing sandals and carrying three small bags that held his family's earthly belongings, he took a look around. "I said to myself and my wife, 'We are born again.'"
The MVRCR placed them in a comfortable home, and Buth began an intensive six-month English course. Neighbors came by, bringing food and clothing. "I don't know how to thank them," Buth says.
For three years, he worked in a commercial laundry. But as one of the earliest in a wave of Cambodian refugees, he realized he had a valuable asset and offered his interpreting services to the small staff of the MVRCR. Soon he became director of resettlement and for nearly two decades threw himself into the work, honored to be able to help others like himself.
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