My mother did a lot of work with a Vietnamese family that came to the U.S. in 1978 with four children.
She got the father a good job working in a factory owned by friends of our family. She had the mother clean our house and referred her to several other families to clean their houses.
By 1983 they had moved out of their apartment and bought a decent home and the parents both had decent used cars. They all spoke fairly good English (the children were all under six when they got here so they were fluent) and took every opportunity to become as American as possible.
Today the parents are both retired. They own a nice 3000 square foot home with an inground pool in a very nice neighborhood. They buy new cars every four or five years. They have money in the bank, 401k plans, etc. Their children all graduated from good colleges and have jobs, are married, have children and are productive members of society.
This family came here with NOTHING, began to realize the American Dream almost immediately and fulfilled it in less than a generation. The irony is that this family IS NOT unique, there are thousands of other families who fled Southeast Asia who are just like them.
Setting aside recessions, it's really quite easy to be successful in America if a person is willing to work for it rather than looking for everything to be done for them.
“If only the native born black communities would learn from the refugees from Vietnam......”
I think the blacks might be more into hair styling. But all I know about that is the hair styling placed looted in Ferguson, and the one burned in Baltimore.