[5] To encourage rapid cultural assimilation and to spread the economic impact, the US government dispersed the refugees into various cities and states throughout the country.

However, once established enough to be able to communicate and travel, many Cambodians began migrating to certain places where the climate was more like home, they knew friends and relatives had been sent, or 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 Stockton in California; Providence, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Cleveland, Ohio; Lynn and Lowell in Massachusetts; and Seattle and Portland in the Pacific Northwest.

Although the Cambodians were spared from the destruction of their home country, whose tragedies maintained a lasting impact into the 21st century, they would come to face newer adversities and hardships in America.

Four percent of Long Beach's population is of Cambodian descent, mainly concentrated on the city's east section, where there is a Cambodia Town neighborhood.

[9][10] In Northern California, Stockton, Modesto, and Oakland have significant Cambodian populations, while San Jose, Santa Rosa and Sacramento have sizable communities as well.

[6][11] There are also growing Cambodian American communities in Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Denver, Colorado.

The Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota, metropolitan area has been a home to many Southeast Asian refugees, mainly Hmong, but also have thousands of Cambodian American residents.

[15] The book is an anthropological study of Khmer refugee families, largely from the perspective of the parental generation, residing in metropolitan Boston and eastern Massachusetts.

The experiences portrayed in the book exemplify what most Cambodian refugees face when dealing with American institutions such as health care systems, welfare, law, police force, church, and school.

[17] Not Just Victims: Conversations with Cambodian Community Leaders in the United States, by Sucheng Chan, is a collection of oral history interviews.

The interviews, mostly collected in the 1990s, describe the challenges faced by the Cambodian community, and the various organizational efforts to assist with refugee resettlement, cultural assimilation, and social services.

[24] In 2014, it was reported that Cambodia Town, Long Beach, California, the only officially recognized ethnic enclave of Cambodian Americans, had a poverty rate of 32.4%.

[26] The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, resulted in many legal immigrants losing the federal aid that they had been receiving from the Social Security Administration.

That especially affected Cambodian immigrants and other Southeast Asians, who were the largest per capita race or ethnic group receiving public assistance in the United States.

[27] Cambodians faced many difficulties upon settling in the United States, such as having few transferable job skills, lack of English, and having experienced trauma as refugees and genocide survivors.

Contributing to this unfamiliarity are the facts that Cambodian history is rarely taught in American public schools, and that many older refugees refuse to discuss the horrors they witnessed in Cambodia.

It was estimated in 1990, five years after most arrived to the US,[30] nearly 81% of Cambodians in America met the criteria for major affective disorder, which encompasses depression and generalized anxiety, accounting for the largest subgroup of Southeast Asians afflicted by mental health problems at the time.

[31] One study conducted among Cambodian Americans residing in Long Beach, California, found that 13.0% of the adult respondents were current cigarette smokers.

[33] In Cambodia Town in Long Beach, California, the Homeland Cultural Center offers classes in Khmer martial arts.