Most refugees remain dependent well beyond a year. A 1992 HHS study of Southeast Asian refugees who arrived between 1986 and 1991 found 52 per cent of the group to be totally dependent upon welfare and an additional 13 per cent to be supplementing earned income with welfare benefits. The average education level upon arrival of those 16 and over in the study group is equivalent to the sixth grade, placing them in the growing and increasingly unemployable unskilled-labor pool. According to senior officials at HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement and the California State Refugee Coordinator, about 53 per cent of all the refugees who have settled in California since 1976 are dependent upon AFDC and other welfare programs. The California data might be expected to show somewhat higher welfare dependency than the national average for refugees owing to peculiarities in counting welfare users in California, and to the state's generous welfare benefits.
Refugee flows inevitably have an impact on other immigrant categories.
For instance, in 1992 the number of Vietnamese arriving as non-refugee immigrants was about equal to the number arriving as refugees. Most of the non-refugee visas were granted because of some family tie with an individual who had arrived earlier through the refugee program. A total of about 85,000 Vietnamese arrived in 1992, making Vietnam second only to Mexico as a source of immigration to the United States. With the Clinton- Gore commitment to reunification of extended families, this number can only grow. The former Soviet Union and its successor republics have replaced Southeast Asia as the biggest source of refugees to the United States - 61,000 in 1992.