the struggles of immigrant communities in Los Angeles County like this one are often invisible to the country at large but many people here do not fit the usual Asian-American stereotype of success and easy assimilation says research analyst Kristen sakaguchi a lot of these communities are marginalized and not really focused on a recent report found that 11% of asian-americans in LA county are living in poverty but the numbers are higher for some groups with Cambodian Americans at 25% many are uneducated and worked as Farmers or fishermen before reaching the United States says lean Chen of Chim girls in action which helps Cambodian American High School students it's very taboo to feel like we're still living in poverty given that we're outside of Cambodia now and so people don't like to talk about it as much many cambodians came to the us as refugees we come from a history of war and genocide in our country um and our community have some of the highest PTSD rates higher than veterans coming back from war um in the US soab York is a Cambodian American High School student she says her parents don't talk about the past and haven't assimilated my parents they both they work on the assembly line so and they both are refugees from Cambodia as well so it's hard for them to speak English York says like many of her classmates her family struggles with not having enough money especially when it comes to schooling for her and her three siblings we do deal with financial barriers that make it hard for us to like apply to colleges or go to places we want to go because we can't necessarily afford it York joined C girls in action and participates in demonstrations like this one at the school district's headquarters in hopes of improving the situation for students in her community lean Chen says getting the funding that CRA girls needs to support the community is a challenge often time it's because there's there's not enough data for funders to justify um giving um additional resources to the community not enough data because asian-americans have traditionally been seen as one group Jen says she hopes with education government agencies will see the differences among asian-americans and change the way they collect data that however will only be one step in helping Cambodian Americans climb out of poverty Elizabeth Lee for vaa news Long Beach