Starting with the fall of Saigon in April 1975, refugees from Vietnam awaited approval to move to the US and other countries. By 1979, there were almost 62,000 Vietnamese in refugee camps, with more than 140,000 people displaced from Cambodia and Laos. Portland, Oregon, was one of the medium-sized US cities that dealt with the relatively sudden influx of every major ethnic group (Vietnamese, Lao, Hmong, Mien and Cambodian) from Southeast Asia.

Fifteen former refugees were interviewed for the Refugee Dreams Revisited project, which was created for the Peabody award-winning series Crossing East that ran on 230 public radio stations.