"The European immigrants who emerged from the Ford Motor Company melting pot came to the United States because they hoped to assimliate into mainstrema American society.  The Hmong came to the United States for the same reason they had left China in the nineteenth century: because they were trying to resist assimilation.  As antrhopologist.........observed, "they did not come to our countries only to save their lives, they rather came to save their selves, that is, their Hmong ethnicity."

So it seems to me that the Hmong people, even before America, are migrant people with no country.  I feel this "lack of a home" associated wtih this group of people is their downfall as well as their sign of strength.  Although the Hmong people were dispersed all over the United States, they had a strong sense of community to unite with other Hmong people as well as resistance to preserve their culture.  As mentioned in the latter part of this chapter, although many Hmong converted to Christianity, they still practice the same rituals they did at home.  However, with this attribute of being a "perpetual migrant," as one of the characters describes in the Chapter "Why Did They Choose Merced," the animal of the chameleon reflects the Hmong people: "You can place [them] anyplace, and [they] will survive, but [they] will not belong.  [They] do not really belong anywhere."  Paradoxically, the strength in which is outlined through their resistance in preservation of their culture from their surroundings is opposed to their "nature" in assimliating to their environment in order to surivive.  Something like that. 
