Vietnamese in Iowa: Volunteering aids assimilation

This young immigrant woman volunteered helping poor people file their taxes and gained so much herself. - - Donna Poisl

By MIKE KILEN

Ly Huynh's e-mail signature is part of a translated Asian poem:
Year by year, year after year, the flowers appear alike/Year after year, year by year, people are not the same

Ly, 23, moved to Des Moines from Vietnam five years ago, one of the latest in the 35-year history of Vietnamese refugees and immigrants who discovered themselves in a strange land.

To Ly, the poem means that a rose will grow, die and return the same next summer, while the people looking at it change.
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