I apologize for not including more information to begin with about the reason WHY these people are coming to our area. Perhaps this
article will help you understand just a little bit more.
"Most of Marathon County’s 5,100 Hmong residents live in Wausau, the second largest concentration in Wisconsin next to Milwaukee, and another 400 Hmong refugees are expected to arrive in the coming months from a refugee camp in Thailand. Brown County has about 3,000 Hmong residents — the third largest concentration in the state — most of whom live in Green Bay, and it expects to receive about 200 to 300 more residents from the refugee camp.
The Hmong — an ethnic minority who helped the CIA in Laos during the Vietnam War — have come here as political refugees out of fear of retribution following the communist takeover in their homeland."
Also this
article may clarify things. "Wisconsin has an estimated 47,000 Hmong - the third-highest population among the states. With such a large population already here, resettling refugees now should go more smoothly compared with years ago when the first influx of Hmong strained resources."
I can't seem to find the article where I first read some of the reasons for Wausau being the target for much of the immigration. It was actually in a local paper and I don't see it on their site - probably because it was about 4 or 5 months ago. What I recall from the article was that the Wausau area had been considered Unfriendly to other ethnic groups. We actually rarely see blacks in the community and prior to this immigration we saw few asians. The area was primarily populated by caucasians. There is also a lot of jobs in factories here. The city is based on it's industry using wood. There is a large paper mill, woodchip factories and between my town and the Wausau area there are 4 window manufacturers. It doesn't seem that jobs are hurting anymore than anywhere else in the country.