A telephone survey was conducted of 458 adult residents of La Crosse, Wisconsin, a community with over 2,000 Hmong immigrants, as well as lesser numbers of other Southeast Asian (SEA) immigrants. Knowledge about and attitude toward the SEA immigrants were assessed. The community was almost evenly divided in its attitude toward the new immigrants. A positive attitude toward SEAs was negatively related to ethnocentrism and positively related to economic optimism. It was also correlated with selected demographic variables. Multiple regression analyses showed that ethnocentrism accounted for a significant portion of the variance in attitude even after economic optimism and demographic background factors had been entered into the equation. Implications for policy and community attitude change are discussed.
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