Hmong
During the first and second Indochina Wars, France and the United States' Central Intelligence (CIA) recruited thousands of Hmong people, including young boys, in Laos, to fight against forces from north and south Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao insurgents. This CIA operation is known as the Secret War, which occurred during the Vietnam War and the Laotian Civil War.[citation needed] Following the war, hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand to seek political asylum.
Thousands of these refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves. The first wave resettled in the late 1970s, mostly in the United States,[7] but also in Australia, France, French Guiana, Canada, and Argentina.[citation needed] Others have returned to Laos under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs.