French programs making a difference for Hmong

PARIS, FRANCE -- In the apartment buildings jutting above a Paris suburb, the hallways are filled with the faint smell of fried rice, and the mailboxes are marked with names such as Vang and Thao. This is home to cousins, uncles, sisters and brothers of Hmong immigrants in Minnesota.

 Like the Hmong in Minnesota, these families began migrating after Laos fell to Communist rule in the mid-1970s. And, like their Minnesota relatives, they arrived with few marketable skills and little grasp of the language and culture of their new homeland.

 But unlike their relatives in Minnesota, who have the highest welfare use among Minnesota's immigrants, the vast majority of the Hmong in France have been holding jobs since they arrived. Hmong leaders attribute the difference to France's system of child allowances, to family child care options and to the work disincentives embedded in the U.S. welfare system.

 "A big advantage in France is we have the family allowance," said Lyxuxu Lyfoung, a leader of the French Hmong community who has visited Minnesota. "For example, if you're pregnant, the government helps you [financially] from the first month until you deliver the baby. After that you get the child allowance. And you can work if you get it.

 "In the U.S., if the family is on welfare, they can't work. It seems like if you work, you earn less money than if you are on welfare."

 Although the French government doesn't track job participation by refugees, the refugee resettlement office (France Terre d'Asile) and Hmong leaders estimate that about 85 percent to 90 percent of Hmong families have jobs. A small minority receive the French equivalent of AFDC, called minimum revenue income, according to the resettlement office and Hmong officials. But in Minnesota, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of Hmong households receive public assistance, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services.

 French connections

 To be fair, the roughly 10,000 Hmong refugees arriving in France had another advantage over their relatives in Minnesota, who now number 17,000. Because Laos was once part of French Indochina, the Hmong were known and had a good reputation among French military officials, missionaries and other expatriates who had lived in Laos, said Jean Pierre Clairio, director of the refugee center in Creteil where the Hmong were processed. Many offered work to the refugees when they arrived, he said.

 "After six months, they all left the center with a job," recalled Clairio.

 But Gaonau Maou and her husband Fu Maou didn't benefit from any Laos connections. The couple, in their early 30s, show how the French family benefits -- particularly child care -- have helped both parents to work.

 The couple live in a modest apartment in a high-rise in the Paris suburb of Grigny, the hub of Paris' Hmong community where about 80 families have settled. Gaonau is a social worker; her husband is a manager of meat department in a supermarket. They have two children -- a reserved 7-year-old named Benoit and a mischievous 2-year-old named Jeoffroy, who relish running around the house and wrestling on the sofa.

 Child-care options abound

 Their child-care arrangements would make most Minnesota parents drool. 

For starters, each day Benoit attends an école maternal, a public preschool where he learns to paint, draw, write his name, how to behave at the table and how to play with other children. The school is part of a network of preschools run by the Ministry of Education and staffed by professional educators.

 The schools are mandatory for 3-year-olds: They have been part of the French public school system, in some form, for nearly a hundred years, and virtually all French kids attend them.

 "I liked the fact that Benoit could meet other children; it helped him grow up," said Gaonau Maou. "And he's learning things that I can't teach him."

 Because Maou often works until 6 p.m., she takes advantage of another day care option: an after-school day care center that will pick up Benoit and bring him to another government-certified child care center until mom can pick him up.

 Meanwhile Jeoffroy stays home with Maou's sister most of the day under an innovative French program designed to curb off-the-books child care. Maou has hired her sister, Rachel Yang, to be an in-home child care provider. Maou pays her sister's wages; the French government pays her social security and pension benefits. Yang reports her income and pays taxes on it.

 Yang, 27, said the social security benefits mean a lot to her; so does the opportunity to help her sister raise her children. "My sister needs child care; I need a job. It's a great arrangement," she said.

 To complete her child care arrangements, Maou sends Jeoffroy to a halte guardarie (a drop-in day care center) twice a week for a few hours. Staffed by professionals, these government-certified centers allow mothers to run errands and to give otherwise isolated children a place to meet other kids.

 "I think it's good for Jeoffroy because he meets other children -- French children -- not only Hmong," said Gaonau. "Also it's good for him because of his personality. He's very dynamic and needs a lot of contact."

 Gaonau says her day-care options allow her to work with the peace of mind that her children are in good hands. The $147 a month she receives as a government child allowance helps pay for the kids' food, clothes and other household needs.

 A level playing field

 The French child care network, in particular les école maternal, have the added benefit of leveling the intellectual and developmental playing field of poor and rich children, of immigrants and native-born French, said Olga Baudelot, a senior researcher at France's National Center of Pedological Research.

 Studies have found, for example, that nearly 54 percent of the children of unskilled workers who have not spent time in nursery school have to repeat first grade. That compares with 38 percent who have attended preschool for two years, according to research by Barbara Bergmann, an economics professor at American University in Washington, author of a forthcoming book comparing the French and U.S. child welfare systems.

 Of course, the French system carries a pricetag. According to Bergmann, France spent $45.4 billion on child care initiatives in 1991; the United States spent $23.9 billion. And overall spending on child well-being is $229 billion in France, compared with $146 billion in the United States. 

"In the U.S., there is excellent day care, but you have to have money to use it," said Baudelot. "In France, it's part of our integration model, being part of the country. Our model leads to less ghettoization, the breaking apart of a country into communities."

 While some Hmong men, like Lyfoung, aren't crazy about the idea of sending their 3-year-olds off to preschool, there seems to be an understanding that the French have a different attitude toward children.

 "The French government has a longer-term vision than the U.S.," said Lyfoung. "If you pay for kids when they are young, they will pay taxes when they are older." 

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