If you have been following the 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 jerefugee experience in communist vietnam in 1975, but in many ways it reminds us of images that we might see on the news today. Its hard to ignore the human stories of families perishing at icet, refugees suffocating in meat trucks. Theyre crowding onto leaking boats, theyre drowning the bodies of those unable to cross to safety are washing up. And refugees have been in the news for the past few years particularly related to the crisis in syria, but refugees are being up rooted 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 been very difficult to ignore the public response to refugees. And Refugee Resettlements like so many other topics today has become a polarizing topic. On one hand opposition has been fierce. Politicians at the local, state and federal level have linked refugees to terrorism and have pursued antirefugee policies in the name of National Security. The most famous of these measures is president Donald Trumps executive orders which grounded 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 office initiated one of the biggest debates of his presidency. To be sure politicians are not the only ones who have taken action on the issue of refugees. There have also been instances of vigilante antirefugee activism, some of it potentially violent, and much of it centered specifically on muslim refugees. For example, in shelbiville and in tennessee there were rallies led by white nationalists and neonazis. But its 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 american protests and facilitated legal aid at airports across the country. Community groups organized rallies and Service Projects to raise awareness of 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, im a historian and my job is to remind you we need 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 antirefugee sentiment before. Weve seen a generous prorefugee response before. Weve seen anxiety about religious and cultural difference 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 conversation is not paying attention to history and lessons we can learn from the past. You especially dont hear enough about asian refugees. We might hear more about jewish refugees but not that much about asian refugees. Now, ive made the case this entire semester that asianAmerican History is American History. So today im going to talk about asian refugee migrations that took place and this i argue changed the course of refugee history in the United States for decades to come. Im going to talk about refugees known as ugandanasian refugees and Southeast Asian refugees. They arrived in the 1970s and 1980s some of them as late as the beginning of the 20th 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 ordinary reasons. For the fist 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 resultled in a new way. Were talking about a huge refugee migration here. Over a million Southeast Asian refugees came to the United States in the last couple of decades of the 20th century, and that refugee migration and the amount of work it took to coordinate relief and resettlement efforts both overseas and domestically made government officials realize they needed to have a more systematic and organized and permanent way to respond to refugee crises. Its in part because of Southeast Asian refugees in particular we see the emergence for a push for new legislation which culminated in the refugee act. This act is still enforced today. Ill talk about the details of that act later. Number three, another reason why Southeast Asian refugee migrations and also ugandanasian 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 nonwhite, noneuropean, nonchristian refugees to be resettled in the United States. There had been cuban refugees and jewish refugees. Ill talk about that later, but this was the first huge group of nonwhite, noneuropean, nonchristian refugees. And these refugees were so different that it was a source of great anxiety for americans. In truth these refugees ended up be the forerunner population so these refugees in many ways set the groundwork for how the United States would resettle refugees. But also were a har binger what would come. Southeast asian refugees in particular and it would change its approach to refugees in the decades to come. Youll know we have been talking about asian refugees. In fact, the history of vietnamese refugees has received a lot of attention in the past couple of years because of this book, the sympathizer which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016. And you are reading an excerpt from this novel this week, and well discuss it next week. He himself was a refugee, and hes reflected a lot about 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. People have characterized my novel the sympathizer as an immigrant story and me as an immigrant. No, my novel is a war story and 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 an end point to their story. However they arrived, whether theyre 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 undead who rise from dying states to march or swim toward our borders in endless waves. So lets stop and think about this line a little. What do you think he means by saying immigrants are different from refugees . That it isnt a choice immigrants take to build their own new future whereas like with the refugee crisis we see now theres often like a push that forces them to leave their own countries and migrate somewhere else just because of like a failure of government or reasons they dont have control over themselves. Absolutely. So there is a forced migration that characterizes refugee migration rather than immigrants who as you point out have more of a choice. I also think with refugees theres a connotation when their home country, when the turmoil stops in their home country for a refugee the reason we would welcome them in is because were housing them until they go back. So the ability to be able to return to your home country and well talk about how a lot of immigrants migrate to the United States or elsewhere and return home, but refugees dont have that option 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. Refugee migrations is characterized by aiming for survival. What do you think he means when he says refugees are zombies of the world . I thought that was evocative, zombies of the world. The undead who rise in dying states. In a way like they are the only vessels of culture left of these dying states, and its really hard to get someone to, you know, completely forfeit their culture because it is part of their identity. So as long as they live the culture lives. Yes, okay. So i think this is really powerful. They are often vessels of their culture. Theyre 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 people levering dying states in circumstances is really powerful. I think that language of zombies is really powerful it reminds us of desperation, the violence, the fear that people lead that pushes people to migrate. I think 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 end there but continues to shape their lives in years to come. He called attention to w of the most important aspects to refugees and what distinguishes them from immigrants. Number one, they are forcibly removed from their homes due to political conflict, Natural Disaster or other extraordinary circumstances, and theyre often very traumatized people. Zombies as he would say. Interesting thing about refugees is they are powerful in our mythology of american exceptionalest American History. Think about the poem, the new colossus. In it she describes the statue of liberty as the mother of exiles who says give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teaming shore. Send these the tempest to me i lift my loft beside the golden door. How many of you have heard those lines before . And the fact those lineerize on the statue of liberty which is a symbol of immigration in the United States is really powerful. It really centers the idea of the United States as being a welcoming haven for people who are exiles. Unfortunately, the history of the United States tells a somewhat different more complicated story. The truth is we havent always had humanitarian impulse to welcome refugees. Usually weve only done so when its in our humanitarian National Interest. Usually weve been more inclined to actually reject refugees than to accept them. To borrow the words of histor historian eric tang are also deeply unsettled by the experience of force the migrati migration. To give you an overview of what ill faulk about today, ill give you background of resettlement policy after the Second World War, and use that back front to set up thats when a small group of ugandan asian refugees arrived in the United States, followed by an even larger group of refugees, Southeast Asian refugees. Ill talk about the crisis that developed overseas, but ill focus mostly on developments 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. Ill tease out why the history of resettlement matters and ill conclude with some discussion about how Southeast Asian americans today are drawing on their refugee history to intervene in contemporary Public Policy debates. Any questions so far . So lets begin with background about refugees resettlement in the United States during the 20th century. During the 1940s, 50s and 60s were european mostly white, jewish or christian. During this period, right after the Second World War and during the cold war, a commitment to opposing communism shaped how the United States determined which leave gerefugees to accep. After world war ii, the United States changed the immigration policies to accept peoples displaced by war. They were known as displaced persons. They benefited from the landmark legislation of the time, which was the 1948 displaced persons act. That act eventually expired and in 1953 it was replaced by the Refugee Relief act, which helped other european refugees including italians, greeks and dutch refugees. In 1956, we see cold war developments in europe also shape a new refugee populations and give rise to new groups of people seeking refuge, in particular the hungarian revolution occurred and Freedom Fighters as they were popularly known, we are welcomed to the United States. They were accepted under what is called parole power, which allowed the United States to accept refugees and circumvent its own immigration laws, which at this time, if you recall, were pretty restrictive. Throughout much of the cold war, the executive branch used a loophole in immigration law, the parole power, to admit refugees whether it deemed when it was in the National Interest to do so. For the first time because of cubas proximity to the United States, the United States was a country of first refuse, mean and then applied for resettlement in the United States. Especially to places like miami. A number of remembers, and these requirements illustrated how the United States pursued its on cold warse selfinterest. The u. S. Offered a special welcome to people fleeing communism. Second, the preference was given for refugees who are professionals or highly educated, skilled, keeping in of in with other immigration laws of the period. And while they humanitarian efforts were often centered on the needs of the United States. They images feature refugees who appeared during this per. On the left is displaced persons registers at ft. On on tear i dont center. And the one on the right is a cover of time, featuring their chosen person of the year in 1956. The person of the year in 1956 was the hungarian freedom fighter. So lets think about this. What do you think this image on the right tells us about how americans viewed hungarian Freedom Fighters during this time. Think about what it means for time to choose hungarian Freedom Fighters as their person of the year, and to present them in this way. Up what does this magazine cover tell us about how americans viewed hungarian refugees . Definitely in a positive light. Yeah. Not a lot different from how we view Syrian Refugees today. Yes, really positive. You can see his face, so bold, so serious, noble. There was enormous enthusiasm for welcoming people who were seen as fighting for freedom, who were seen as being allies in the United States war against communism. So i think thats a really important image to have in mind, how refugees can be celebrated and how the celebration of refugees converges powerfully with american up interests, in particular this moment, the cold war lives in the 20th century, it is cold war continued to shape the United States stance toward refugee populations, but the last quarter of the 20th century saw a major shift in the worlds refugee population. In 1964, a Refugee Affairs expert at the World Council of churches declared we are now faced with a problem of refugees who are, by and large, nonwhite and by and large, nonchristian. It remains to be seen how we will react. Americans were worried about how the United States would handle these new refugees. One pastor in st. Paul, minnesota explained many problems will arise because of the new influx of people to america, as a result of new people coming from different cultures and backgrounds. How will they news immigrants be accepted, he asked. Government leaders also worried about this new immigrant population, new refugee population in particular. During a congressional hearing shortly after the fall of saigon, julia taft, who was of the Interagency Task force on indochina refugees declared never before in the history of this country, mr. Chairman, has so many people from such different culture, ethnic and religious backgrounds been introduced into American Society in such a solar time. But what said his refugees apart from previous populations is not that national racially, ethnically, religiously different, but that these communities didnt necessarily have a community of people in the United States already to welcome them. S amid the debate, theres been little attention paid to the fact that the United States has b