Anyone who's been to doughnut shops in Southern California may notice how many of them are owned by Cambodians. After fleeing the killing fields of the Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, many Cambodian refugees ended up in SoCal and though an interesting set of circumstances, got into the dough-frying biz. In this video, we meet a family in the Los Angeles area who churns out 1,000 to 1,400 doughnuts a day, and splits up the shifts among family members. They have many cousins who own shops too. It's this commitment to the American Doughnut Dream that has allowed many Cambodian immigrant families to send their kids off to college (every cruller counts!), and it's why so many SoCal-ians know how to say "thank you" in Khmer. Watch the video after the jump.

Cambodian Refugees and the American Doughnut Dream

[via Boing Boing]