Hey OP,

I am here in Minnesota.

First off, I had a white buddy, way back before the Hmong started arriving in the Twin Cities, who fished Phalen Lake(urban lake) every day and kept everything he caught.
He made the best pickled sunfish I have ever tasted and we would plow through gallons of it while downing many beers.

So, it is not a specifically "Hmong" problem. However, the Hmong people came from mountainous jungles in Laos. They were/are tribal survivalist type culture. I have heard them described as the "hillbillies" of southeast Asia with the same sort of derision thrown towards American southern hillbillies. The Hmong people have a total of 17 last names in their families.

They were enlisted by the C.I.A. in the illegal wars within Cambodia and Laos. There is solid evidence that they were pawns in the C.I.A.'s efforts to corner the "Golden Triangle" heroin supply.

When they started arriving in the Twin Cities back in the mid-late seventies, there were many stories of their primitive ways. They didn't know what a refrigerator was for and their food stamp food was frequently found rotting and spoiling in their homes. Hmong women were seen harvesting dandelions and plantain on city boulevards.

One story that really made the rounds was the family that flooded the basement of their rented home and were fish farming in their own basement. Supposedly the building had to be razed. This according to a longtime truth-in-housing inspector I know.

In a southeastern Minnesota county, a group of 18 Hmong men were inspected by a State game warden. Their bag contained 38 species, 11 of which were in season. The bag included cardinals, robins, an owl, basically anything that walked, crawled, or flew in the woods.

These guys were consummate hunters, woodsmen, jungle survivors, coming from a culture that had very little concept of the conservation and sportsmanship that is ingrained in our culture.

But, they have been here for 35 years now, and they have made great strides in becoming part of the fabric of our society. I personally have met Hmong ministers, lawyers, doctors, investment counselors, and shop owners. These people are incredibly industrious. Heck, we have a Hmong state senator from St. Paul, and numerous Hmong police officers, bureaucrats and so forth. The farmer's markets are teeming with Hmong truck-patchers with beautiful produce. My German ancestors started out here in St. Paul as truck-patchers.


So, don't lump all the Hmong into a nice neat package. There have been problems in the past, and some are ongoing, but I think the trend is for the better.