The Philippine Refugee Processing Center, Bataan

Where refugees bound for the United States learned English and American daily life before they flew.

Preparing for America

From 1980 into the 1990s, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan, prepared refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia who had already been accepted for resettlement in the United States. Students took months of English lessons and cultural orientation, learning everything from job interviews to grocery shopping.

A bridge

For many Indochinese Americans, Bataan was the last stop before arrival. It sits between the first asylum camps of the region and the new communities that refugees built in the United States.

Connected stories

Tony Hornik-Tran spent eleven months in refugee camps in the Philippines before he was resettled in Wisconsin, and later returned to the camp system as a caseworker.