Why did the Panouvong family need assistance assimilating into American culture/life in the United States? How does Saeng feel about life in America? Help this is the story

By the end of their second year, they were off welfare and were saving up for a
cheap secondhand car, something that they could never have been able to afford as
grade school teachers back in Laos.
And Saeng, their oldest child, had been designated their family driver.
“So you will be taking the driving test in the Lambert car?” Mrs. Panouvong
asked now, adeptly twisting tiny hot peppers from their stems.
Saeng nodded. “Not their big station wagon, but the small blue car—David’s.”
There it was again, that flutter of excitement as she said David’s name. And yet he
had hardly spoken to her more than two or three times, and each time only at the
specific request of his mother.
Mrs. Lambert—their sponsor into the United States—was a large, genial woman
with a ready smile and two brown braids wreathed around her head. The wife of
the Lutheran minister in their town, she had already helped sponsor two Laotian
refugee families and seemed to have enough energy and good will to sponsor
several more. Four years ago, when they had first arrived, it was she who had
taken the Panouvong family on their rounds of medical check-ups, social welfare
interviews, school enrollments, and housing applications.
And it was Mrs. Lambert who had suggested, after Saeng had finished her driver
education course, that she use David’s car to take her driving test. Cheerfully,
David—a senior on the school basketball team—had driven Saeng around and
taken her for a few test runs in his car to familiarize her with it. Exciting times they
might have been for Saeng—it was the closest she had ever come to being on a
date—but for David it was just something he was doing out of deference to his
mother. Saeng had no illusions about this. Nor did she really mind it. It was
enough for her at this point just to vaguely pretend at dating. At sixteen, she did
not really feel ready for some of the things most thirteen-year-olds in America
seemed to be doing. Even watching MTV sometimes made her wince in
embarrassment.