News in recent years, i imagine that you, like me, have found it difficult to ignore the topic of refugees. This is an image of a refugees experience fleeing communist vietnam in 1975. But in many ways, it reminds us of images that we might see on the news today. It is hard to ignore the human stories of families perishing it see. Refugees are suffocating in meat trucks. They are crowding onto leaky boats. They are drowning. The bodies of those who are unable to cross to safety are washing up on mediterranean beaches. And refugees have been in the news for the past few years. Particularly related to the crisis in syria. But refugees are being uprooted by conflict all around the world. Were not just talking about refugees coming from syria, but from other war torn regions. Especially in the past couple of years, it has also been very difficult to ignore the public response to refugees. And Refugee Resettlement, like so many other topics today, has become a polarizing topic. On one hand, opposition to refugees has been theorists and even hostile. Politicians at the local, state and federal level have linked refugees to terrorism and have pursued anti refugee policies in the name of National Security. The most famous of these measures is president Donald Trumps executive orders which ground the federal Refugee Program virtually to a halt in january 2017. His imposition of what is widely known as the refugee ban, shortly after taking off this, initiated one of the sharpest legal and political debates of his presidency. It is part of a broader effort to limit the number of foreigners who are able to enter the United States. To be sure, politicians are not the only ones have taken action on the issue of refugees. Theres also been instances of vigilante anti refugee activism. Some of it potential to potentially violent, and much of it centered on specifically muslim refugees. For example, in shelby ville and tennessee, there were rallies led by white nationalists and neonazis. But it is also hard to ignore the fact that there has been a tremendous amount of public support for refugees. The january 2017 executive orders prompted thousands of americans to protest and facilitate legal aid at airports across the country. Community groups organized rallies and Service Projects to raise awareness on the issue of refugees. People put signs declaring their support for refugees on their front lawns or above their church entryways, or even on stickers on their laptop. Now i am a historian and my job is to remind you that we have to have some historical perspective. The truth is that, in many ways, we have been here before. Ive already pointed to this image of a boat. This is an image from 1975, but it could very well be an image of people fleeing by boat today. Weve seen these images before. Weve seen a vicious eruption of anti refugee sentiment before. Weve seen a generous pro refugee response before. Weve seen anxiety about religious and cultural differences before. Weve worried about refugees and National Security before. Now i am frustrated a little bit by our contemporary conversation because so much of our contemporary conversation is not paying attention to our history. As well as the lessons that we can learn from the past. We especially do not hear a lot about asian refugees. We might hear a little bit more about jewish refugees, but not that much about asian refugees. Now ive made the case this entire semester that Asian American history is american history. And this is true for refugee history as well. So today im going to talk about asian refugee migrations that took place for decades ago. This refugee migration, i argue, changed the course of refugee history in the United States for the decades to come. Im going to talk about refugees known as the ugandans asian refugees and Southeast Asian refugees. They arrived in the 19 seventies and 19, some of them as late as the beginning of the 21st century. And the migration of these asian refugees was a turning point in several different ways. Number one, in the 1970s, refugees were accepted for new reasons. For the first time, the United States wasnt just accepting refugees because they opposed communism. The United States was accepting refugees on the basis of emerging humanitarian commitments to human rights. Number two, during this period, refugees were accepted and resettled in a new way. We are talking about a huge refugee migration here. Over 1 million southeast rare Southeast Asian refugees came to United States in the last couple of decades of the 25th century. That refugee migration and the amount of work it took to coordinate, relief and resettlement efforts, both overseas and domestically, made government officials racket realize that they needed to have a more systematic and organized and prominent way to respond to refugee crises. So it is in part because of Southeast Asian refugees in particular that we see the emergence of a push for new legislation, which culminated in the 1980 refugee act. This act is still enforced today and i will talk about details of that act later. Number three. Another reason why Southeast Asian refugee migrations, and also ugandan asian refugee migrations, matter. These asian refugees were at the beginning of a new wave of refugees. A new refugee population. They were the first group of non white, non european, non Christian Refugees to be resettled in the United States. There have been cuban refugees and jewish refugees, i will talk about that later, but this was the first huge group of non white and non european and non Christian Refugees. Can these refugees these refugees were so different that it was a great source of anxiety for americans. In truth, these refugees ended up being the foreigner for refugee populations who would arrive in the United States in subsequent decades. So these refugees, in many ways, set the groundwork for how the United States would resettle refugees, but also were a harbinger for what would come. In some asian refugees, ugandan asian refugees and Southeast Asian refugees in particular, they were at the center of major changes in the 1970s and profoundly changed the u. S. And its approach to refugees in the decades to come. Would lie literature, you will know that weve been talking about asian refugees. In fact, the history of vietnamese refugees as received a lot of attention in the past couple of years because of this book, the sympathizer. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. You are reading an excerpt from this novel this week and we will discuss it next week. The author himself was a refugee and he is reflected a lot on what it means to be a refugee and a writer and to tell his story. In an essay he published in the New York Times, he observed the following. Many people have characterized my novel, the sympathizer, as an immigrants story, and me as an immigrant. No. My novel is a war story. I am not an immigrant. I am a refugee, who like many others, has never ceased being a refugee in some corners of my mind. He continues, immigrants are more reassuring than refugees because there is in and point to their story. However they arrive, whether they are documented or not, their desires for a new life can be absorbed into the American Dream or into the european narrative of civilization. By contrast, refugees are zombies of the world. The undid who rise from dying states to march or swim toward our borders in endless waves. So lets stop and think about this line for a little bit. What do you think he means by saying that immigrants are different from refugees . Rays hands. I think theres a choice that immigrants take to build their own new future, whereas like with the refugee crisis is that we see now, theres often like a push that forces them to leave their own countries and migrate somewhere else just because of a failure of government or reasons that they dont have control over themselves. Absolutely. So there is a forced migration that characterizes refugee migrations, rather than immigrants who, as you point out, have more of a choice. I also think with refugees theres somewhat of a connotation that when their home country, like when the turmoil stops in their home country, a lot of times they would be okay going back, versus an immigrant who came to this country by their own choice. To build a new life for whatever the reason is. So for a refugee, the reason we would welcome them in is like we are housing them until they go back. But within emigrant, that connotation isnt there. So the ability to be able to return to your home country. Weve talked about how a lot of may migrants migrate to the United States or elsewhere and then returned home, but refugees do not have that option. That is a really important point. That is because they have been forced out due to war, persecution, Natural Disaster, any number of reasons that make their life in their previous country impossible. They would not survive. So i think you are exactly right. Refugee migrations are characterized by a need for survival. What do you think he means when he says that refugees are exam these of the world . I thought that was evocative. Some of these of the world. The undid who rise from dying states. In a way, they are like the only vessels of culture left of these dying states. Its really hard to get someones to completely forfeit their culture because it is part of their identity. So as long as they lived, the culture lives. Yes. So i think this is very powerful. They are often vessels of their culture. They are leaving desperate situations where they would have otherwise died, physically and perhaps also their community would have died, their culture would have died. And so this idea of leaving dying states. In circumstances a profound dislocation, trauma is really powerful. I think that language of zombies is really powerful because it reminds us of the desperation, the violence, the that people leave, that pushes people to migrate. And i think that its important for us to remember that this violence, that this suffering, that this persecution, that this upheaval, that forced them to migrate doesnt just and there. It continues to shape their lives in new years to come. So the author calls attention to the two most important aspects of refugees and what distinguishes them from immigrants. Number one, they are involuntary migrants as you point it already, forcibly removed by their from their homes from forceable conflict Natural Disaster in other circumstances. They are often very traumatized people, zombies. As he would say. The interesting thing about refugees is they are powerful in our mythologies of immigration history. Think about the palm, that is on the statue of liberty. The new colossus. In it, anna lazarus calls refugees the mother of exit exiles. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Youre teaming shore. Send lease to me, i lift my lamp beside an open door. How many of you have heard those lines before . And the fact that those lines, are on the statue of liberty which is a symbol of immigration in the United States and it centers the United States and it shows again faces being an opening haven for those who are exiles. Unfortunately the history of the United States tells a somewhat different more complicated story. The truth is we havent always had the humanitarian impulse to welcome refugees usually we have only done so when its in our humanitarian National Interest. Usually usually, we have been more inclined to reject refugees. To borrow the words of historian eric tang, often refugees who have been accepted for resettlement are not only resettled, they are also deeply unsettled by the experience. To give you an overview, i will give you a little background about american Refugee Resettlement policy after the Second World War. Im going to use that background to set up why the 1970s were such an important period of change. That is when a small group of ugandan refugees arrived in the United States and they were followed by a larger group of refugees, Southeast Asian refugees, who are described as indochinese refugees, including those from vietnam, laos, cambodia. I will talk about the crisis that developed overseas. But i will focus mostly on development that took place here in the United States. How the general public viewed Southeast Asian refugees. How Southeast Asian refugees were admitted and resettled. And how Southeast Asian refugees themselves tell stories about their experience. I will tease out why the history of Southeast AsianRefugee Resettlement matters and conclude with discussion about how southeast Asian Americans today are drawing on their refugee history to enter Public Policy debates. Any questions so far . Lets begin with some background on Refugee Resettlement in the United States during the 20th century. During the 1940s through 1960s, most refugees came from europe, with the exception of cuban refugees. Most were white and jewish or christian. During this time, after the Second World War and the cold war, a commitment to opposing communism shaped have the United States determined which refugees to accept. During and after world war ii, the United States changed its immigration policies to accept people displaced by war. They were known as displaced persons and they benefited from the landmark legislation of the time, which was the 1948 displaced persons act. That act eventually expired and in 1953, was replaced by the Refugee Relief act, which helped other europeen refugees, including italians, greeks and dutch refugees. In 1956, we see cold war developments in europe also shape a new refugee population, give rise to new groups of people seeking refuge. In particular, the hungarian revolution occurred and Freedom Fighters were welcomed to the United States. They were accepted under what is known as parole power, which allows the United States to accept refugees and circumvent its own Immigration Laws, which at this time, were pretty restrictive. Throughout much of the cold war, the executive branch used a loophole in Immigration Law to admit refugees when he deemed that it was in the National Interest to do so. Most refugees admitted were fleeing leftwing or communist regimes. Finally in 1959, cuban exiles began to arrive. The first to arrive were batasista sympathizers who feared reprisal. The United States was a country of first refuge, meaning they came straight to the United States. Especially to places like miami. The policy for cuban refugees was such that these refugees with the given asylum as part of a bigger anticastro policy. A number of requirements were imposed on these early refugee populations. They illustrated how the United States pursued its own cold war selfinterest. First, as i have already mentioned, the u. S. Offered a special welcome to people fleeing communism. Second, preference was given for refugees who were professionals or highly educated or skilled. This is in keeping with other Immigration Laws of the period. While welcoming people has been seen as a human acts, these efforts were often centered on the need of the United States. These images feature refugees who arrived in the United States during this time. The photo on the left features displaced persons who were registering at fort ontario emergency refugee center. It housed 1000 people displaced by world war ii. The photo on the right is the cover of Time Magazine 1957, featuring their chosen person of the year in 1956. The person of the year 1956 was the hungarian freedom fighter. Lets think about this. What do you think this image on the right tells us about how americans viewed hungarian Freedom Fighters . Think about what it means for Time Magazine to choose hungarian Freedom Fighters as they are person of the year. Whats this tell us . Refugees today. Yes, really positive. You can see this phase, so serious, noble. There was enormous enthusiasm for welcoming people who were seen as fighting for freedom. They were seen as being allies in the United Stateswar against communism. It is a really important image to have in mind. How refugees