After the Fall of Saigon in 1975 immigrants from southeast Asia began coming to Garden City. Garden City Catholics sponsored an initial group of Vietnamese immigrants that year. More Vietnamese came in the 1980s during a wave of immigration, and Lao people also came with them. Dr. Janet E. Benson of Kansas State University stated that perhaps about half had originated from Wichita since they had lost work during industry layoffs there. The second group of Vietnamese were less educated than the first, and they were more likely to be Buddhist as opposed to being Christian. In their home country they had originally done agricultural and/or fishing work. By the late 1980s many Mexican immigrants replaced Vietnamese immigrants who had moved away from Garden City and stopped doing meatpacking work since they had made sufficient money.