Amerasian children

Definition: According to definitions in congressional legislation of the 1980’s, "Amerasians” are the children of women of specified Asian nations and American men who were born during a certain time period. More generally, however, the term is often used colloquially to describe children of non-Asian U.S. citizens and Asian nationals

Significance: The vast majority of Amerasian children who immigrated to the United States after the early 1970’s were of American and Vietnamese descent. Those of American and Korean ancestry were a distant second. After 1987, Vietnamese Amerasians were permitted to immigrate to the United States and bring along close relatives, thereby adding to Vietnamese immigration to America.

Barry Huntoon (left), an American VietnamWar veteran, with his wife and infant child in 1987, greet a teenage Amerasian girl whom Huntoon believed to be his daughter, born after he left Vietnam. However, the girl’s natural mother later denied Huntoon’s claim. Huntoon’s well-publicized story, later made into the 1990 television film The Girl Who Came Between Them, pointed up the difficulties of establishing the paternity of the many Amerasian children left behind by American war veterans. (AP/Wide World Photos)

After World War II ended in 1945, American troops remained stationed in East Asian countries such as Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. After the Korean War ended in 1953, additional troops remained stationed in South Korea. The years that followed saw an increase in the numbers of children born to American soldiers and local Asian women. The vast majority of the American fathers were European Americans and African Americans. Very often, these fathers abandoned their children and the children’s mothers when they returned to America. 

Amerasians and America

The plight of fatherless Korean American children moved American writer Pearl S. Buck to call attention to their neglect, and she chose the term "Amerasians” for them. In 1954, Harry and Bertha Holt promoted American adoption of KoreanWar orphans. Some of these orphans were abandoned Amerasians facing discrimination in Korea as honhyol, or "mixed blood” children.

From about 1962 to 1975, as the United States became more deeply involved in the VietnamWar, relationships between American men and Vietnamese women increased. On average, relationships in which children were born lasted about two years. As American military authorities discouraged American-Vietnamese marriages, only the most determined Americans brought their Vietnamese wives and Amerasian children home to the United States, where these immigrants constituted the vast majority of the 20,000 residents of the country who were counted as Vietnamese by early 1975.

After the communist victory in Vietnam in early 1975, the situation inVietnam for Amerasians deteriorated badly. Even before that time, life had been difficult for them after their fathers left the country. The communists, however, made their lives even harder by showing active hostility toward the children of their American enemies, and they discriminated severely against them and their mothers. Called con lai, "half-breeds,” or bui doi, "children of the dust,” the children were bullied and rejected and denied good educations and job opportunities — which were already scarce under communism. 

Immigration Rights for Amerasians

When the plight of Vietnamese refugees known who tried to leave their homeland by sea caught the free world’s attention after 1978, the U.S. government became willing to admit them as refugees. The first Vietnamese Amerasian children arrived together with other Vietnamese refugees through the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) after 1979. However, this program did not address all the special needs of the Amerasian children. For three years, U.S. Senator Jeremiah Denton introduced and fought for what would become the Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982. On October 22, 1982, that act became law.

The first of two important pieces of federal legislation on this issue during the 1980’s, the Amerasian Immigration Act defined Amerasians as children whose fathers were U.S. citizens and whose mothers were nationals of Kampuchea (Cambodia), Korea, Laos, Thailand, or Vietnam, and who had been born between January 1, 1950, and October 22, 1982. This definition of Amerasian was a narrow legal term. Critics of the law objected that it did not immediately award citizenship to the Amerasians it defined, and that children of American fathers and women from Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines were not considered Amerasians under the law.

The first five hundred Amerasian children admitted to the United States under the 1982 law left Vietnam in 1982 and 1983. As many as 5,500 Vietnamese Amerasians also left under the ODP. Soon, however, the Vietnamese government objected to the U.S. government’s calling these people "refugees” and halted their departure. The 1982 law also allowed only the children to immigrate, leaving behind their mothers in favor of American institutional or private sponsors if the children were under eighteen years of age. This provision explains why relatively few Amerasians from Korea and other eligible nations immigrated under this law.

The Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, which was enacted on December 22, 1987, corrected some of the deficiencies of the 1982 law. Under this new legislation, all children born to American fathers and Vietnamese mothers between January 1, 1962, and January 1, 1976, and their close relatives could immigrate to America.

The 1987 law quickly turned Amerasians in Vietnam from despised "children of dust” to "children of gold.” Some ordinary Vietnamese posed as relatives of Amerasians in order to go to the United States. By 2009, it was estimated that almost all eligible Vietnamese American children who wanted to leave Vietnam had done so. About 25,000 had immigrated under the Homecoming Act and as many as another 10,000 may have entered the country through other means. Additionally, Vietnamese Amerasians facilitated the immigration of some 60,000 to 70,000 of their Vietnamese relatives. 

Adjusting to Life in America

The majority of Amerasians admitted through the immigration laws of 1982 and 1987 generally succeeded in America. However, they did so only after adjusting to the English language and American culture and overcoming their limited formal educations, traumatized lives, and issues of abandonment and discrimination. Moreover, only about 3 percent of them could locate their American fathers. Those who came with their mothers and already had some command of English were among the most successful. Alcoholism, depression, drugs, and crime troubled some Amerasians, but most eventually adapted well.

Through the 1990’s and the early twenty-first century, there were persistent efforts by U.S. lawmakers to widen the definition of Amerasian children eligible for immigration or to bestow automatic citizenship to them. However, none of these efforts had succeeded by the year 2009.

Many Asian Americans have objected to the colloquial use of the term "Amerasian” for all children of non-Asian American fathers and foreign Asian women, arguing that such usage implies that Asian Americans are not real Americans. The 2007 American Community Survey listed 1,707,488 Asian Americans living in the United States who were also descended fromone or more other racial heritages. Among these people, about 170,000 were foreign born, and 66 percent of them—112,200 people—were born in Asia. Under the broadest, if controversial, definition of the term, they might also be called "Amerasians.” 

R. C. Lutz

Further Reading

Gage, Sue-Je Lee. "The Amerasian Problem: Blood, Duty, and Race.” International Relations 21, no. 1 (2007): 86-102. Scholarly analysis of the passage of the Amerasian Immigration Act of 1982 that is strong on the U.S. background regarding Amerasians. The author criticizes the law’s exclusion of Japanese and Filipino Amerasians.

Lamb, David. "Children of the Dust.” Smithsonian 40, no. 3 (June, 2009): 28-37. Informed journalistic overview of the fates of Vietnamese Amerasians and the key events facilitating their immigration to America. Praises the immigrants’ general resilience and corrects stereotypes. Illustrated.

McKelvey, Robert. The Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Powerful and sympathetic portrayal of the fate of Vietnamese Amerasians before, during, and after their immigration to the United States.

Nguyen, Kien. The Unwanted. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2001. Autobiography of a Vietnamese Amerasian left in Vietnam after 1975, his sufferings, resentments, and eventual immigration to the United States.

Yarborough, Trin. Surviving Twice: Amerasian Children of the Vietnam War. Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005. Portrayal of five Vietnamese Amerasian children and their challenging lives in Vietnam and, after immigration, in America.

See also: Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987; Asian immigrants; Child immigrants; Families; Intermarriage; Korean War; Nguyen v. Immigration and Naturalization Service; Orderly Departure Program; Refugees; Vietnam War; Vietnamese immigrants.

Canada vs. United States as immigrant destinations

The United States and Canada are the two main immigrant destinations in North America.

Cuban immigrants

Significance: The overwhelming majority of Cubans who have immigrated into the United States have settled in Florida, whose political, economic, and cultural life they have transformed. The first wave of Cuban refugees used the state as a base to oppose the Cuban government. The refugees of the 1960’s brought Cuban customs to Florida as well as virulently anticommunist beliefs. The sheer volume of the last wave of Cubans during the 1980’s exacerbated already tense racial relations with African American communities, especially in Miami, who felt politically and economically marginalized.

Cuban immigration waves have tended to follow periods of political repression in Cuba. Most Cuban immigrants have settled in Florida, a state only ninety miles from the coast of Cuba. By the year 2008, more than 1.24 million Cuban Americans were living in the United States, mostly in South Florida, where the population of Miami was about one-third Cuban. Many of these Cubans have viewed themselves as political exiles, rather than immigrants, hoping eventually to return to their island homeland after its communist regime falls from power. The large number of Cubans in South Florida, particularly in Miami’s "Little Havana,” has allowed them to preserve their culture and customs to a degree rare for immigrant groups.

Nineteenth Century Immigration

The tradition of Cuban political exiles coming to the United States began during the nineteenth century, when Spain still ruled the island. The first exiles arrived in 1823. Many of them hoped that the United States would annex Cuba, and they supported a failed Cuban revolt against Spain in 1867. During the 1890’s, the exiled Cuban nationalist leader José Martí organized a second revolt and sought the support of thousands of fellow Cuban exiles in New York and Florida. During the Spanish- AmericanWar of 1898, exiles fought on the American side but opposed the Platt Amendment of 1902 that afterward turned Cuba into a protectorate of the United States. After Cuba finally won its full independence, its government became an oppressive dictatorship. During the late 1920’s, Cuban exiles opposed to the government used Miami as a base to plot its overthrow in favor of democratic government.

Castro and Immigration

In 1959, a communist movement led by Fidel Castro overthrew the government of Fulgencio Batista to take power in Cuba. Castro immediately nationalized businesses and large land holdings, while attacking potential political opponents among the wealthy, entrepreneurs, and Batista supporters. Cubans who did not unconditionally support Castro appeared in media portrayals as enemies of the revolution. As Cubans had often done during past periods of political trouble, many sought temporary exile in the United States. However, unlike the past wave, this group of immigrants benefited from the political atmosphere in the United States fostered by ColdWar. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations enthusiastically supported Castro’s enemies as anticommunist freedom fighters.

Profile of Cuban immigrants

*Immigrants who obtained legal permanent resident status in the United States.

Source: Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, 2008.

Between 1959 and 1962, 119,922 Cubans arrived in the United States. These people were primarily of Cuba’s elite: executives and owners of firms, big merchants, sugar mill owners, cattlemen, representatives of foreign companies, and professionals. They used whatever means were necessary to get out of Cuba. The most fortunate among them obtained U.S. immigrant, student, and tourist visas; others entered the United States indirectly, through countries such as Canada, where they applied for U.S. visas. About 14,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in the United States in 1960 and 1961 alone through a clandestine U.S. program code-named "Operation Pedro Pan.” After 1961, Castro permitted emigrants to take only five dollars with them, while requiring them to surrender all other property to his government.

Settling in the United States

Although thousands of Cuban immigrants arrived in the United States nearly destitute, they were not without resources. Many were already familiar with the United States, which they had often visited for business or pleasure before the Cuban Revolution. Some also had business or personal contacts in the country to help them adjust. In addition, since Cuban culture itself was highly Americanized before 1960, the American way of life was not altogether alien to them. Moreover, as exiles fleeing a common enemy, they arrived with a strong sense of solidarity. In South Florida, where the bulk of exiles waited for Castro’s overthrow, those who had arrived earlier tried to ease the shock of the newcomers by advising them on matters such as securing U.S. social security cards, enrolling children in schools, and enlisting in the federally funded Cuban Refugee Program, which provided free medical care and food. The exiles themselves helped one another find jobs and living quarters.

Immigration from Cuba, 1920-2008

Source: Department of Homeland Security, Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2008. Figures include only immigrants who obtained legal permanent resident status.

The U.S. government attempted to relocate the newcomers throughout the country. The stated objective of the government’s resettlement efforts was to lighten the financial burden that the exiles presented to South Florida’s strained social institutions. The federal government may have also feared the social and political implications of having a large, increasingly frustrated, and heavily armed exile population concentrated in Miami. In any case, after the exiles realized that Castro’s government would not soon fall, many began to take advantage of resettlement assistance offered through the Cuban Refugee Program. Many wound up in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Boston, andWashington, D.C. They brought conservative political views and quickly established cultural organizations. Meanwhile, a four-square-mile area in Miami’s southwest section attracted so many Cubans that it garnered the nickname of Little Havana. The area would become the heart of the exile community and act as a magnet to future Cuban immigrants.

Later Immigration Waves

The third wave of Cuban immigration began after the fall of 1965, when Castro announced that all Cubans with relatives living in the United States would be allowed to leave through the port of Camarioca. He invited exiles to come to Cuba by sea to collect their relatives, as commercial flights between Cuba and the United States had been discontinued in the wake of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Hundreds of Miamians accepted Castro’s offer. Within only a few weeks, about 5,000 Cubans left Cuba. Because of the chaotic nature of this exodus, Cuba and the United States negotiated a plan for a more orderly departure through a program the U.S. government dubbed the "Freedom Airlift.” These flights continued until 1973, when Castro unilaterally stopped them. By that time, 247,726 more Cubans had entered the United States. This immigrant wave comprised mostly small merchants, craftsmen, skilled and semiskilled workers, and relatives of middle-class Cubans who had immigrated during the early 1960’s.

In 1978, the Cuban government began discussions with Cuban exiles over the fates of political prisoners in Cuba. The government agreed to release 3,600 of its prisoners and to promote reunification of families by allowing Cubans living in the United States to visit their families on the island. These visits led to a fourth wave of Cuban immigration. In 1980, a chaotic flotilla of Miamians began sailing to the Cuban port of Mariel to bring their families to the United States in what became known as the "Mariel boatlift.” The sailors were forced to carry everyone whom Cuban officials put aboard their boats, including people regarded as social undesirables: prisoners who had committed nonpolitical crimes, mental patients, and homosexuals. However, contrary to popular perceptions in the United States, most of the people who came to the United States in the boatlift were not criminals. The majority were young, working-class men from the mainstream of Cuban society. A significant number of intellectuals were also among these immigrants, some of whom lacked legal immigrant status and consequently spent years in detention in the United States.

End of the Cold War

The end of the Soviet Union’s economic aid to Cuba in 1989 combined with the U.S. trade embargo to produce another wave of immigrants seeking better economic conditions. This final wave of Cuban immigration began in 1989 and continued into the early twenty-first century. These new arrivals became known as balseros because they traveled on makeshift rafts or balsas. Castro initially opposed this immigration. However, in 1994, in an apparent effort to reduce domestic political tensions or to force the United States to negotiate an immigration agreement, Castro reversed his threedecade- old policy of arresting people who tried to escape the island by sea. He announced that Cubans would be allowed to leave in small vessels and makeshift rafts if they wished to go to the United States. U.S. president Bill Clinton’s administration subsequently negotiated an agreement with Cuba to halt this exodus. The accord suspended the preferential treatment that had been given to Cubans since 1959. No longer would they be treated as refugees from a communist state. Additionally, the U.S. Coast Guard was ordered to send all balseros to the U.S. Navy Base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The rafters faced the prospect of being detained indefinitely at Guantanamo if they would not voluntarily return home. Cuban exiles reacted angrily to this change in policy with demonstrations throughout South Florida. Meanwhile, Guantanamo’s detainee population reached 32,000 men, women, and children. Most of these undocumented immigrants were young and without resources.

In 1995, the Clinton administration allowed Guantanamo detainees to qualify for entrance into the United States. However, Cubans wishing to immigrate had to follow the same procedures as immigrants from other countries. They were no longer to receive preferential treatment and would be limited to 20,000 visas per year.With the end of the Cold War, immigrants from communist countries no longer mandated special treatment. Meanwhile, Cubans—including Elián González, who became a cause célèbre in the United States—continued to pile onto rafts in the hope of reaching Florida. Cuban exile organizations, such as Brothers to the Rescue, sent planes near or into Cuban airspace in search of rafters. In 1996, the Cuban air force shot down two of the exile planes, sparking an international crisis with the United States. Clinton retaliated by tightening the embargo on Cuba, but his administration’s policy on Cuban immigration remained unchanged.

Cuban Life in the United States

Cuban Americans have made remarkable progress in adjusting to life in the United States. The 1959 wave of immigrants, who were well above average in educational background and business skills, established an economic and cultural base that would ease the adjustment of later immigrants. However, the successes of the Cubans led to friction with African Americans, many of whom felt politically marginalized and shut out of economic advancement. This friction resulted in 1980 in a riot in the Overtown district of Miami that had a 50- percent unemployment rate among African Americans. The riot was triggered by an incident of police brutality but reflected deep anger at persistent police mistreatment and well as neglect of the black community by Miami’s predominantly Cuban American political leaders. In the aftermath of the riot, little changed despite promises to fix the underlying causes of the revolt. The Cuban immigrants and their descendants have remained a powerful political and cultural force within South Florida.

Caryn E. Neumann

Further Reading

De los Angeles Torres, Maria. In the Land of Mirrors: Cuban Exile Politics in the United States. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Examines the politics of Cuban exiles during the twentieth century, including a focus on the period after the end of the Cold War.

Fernandez, Alfredo A. Adrift: The Cuban Raft People. Houston: Arte Público Press, 2000. Discusses Cuban refugees, including Elián González, who traveled on rafts to reach U.S. soil during the 1990’s.

Gonzalez-Pando, Miguel. The Cuban Americans. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998. Historical examination of Cuban Americans during the twentieth century with a focus on the post- 1959 years.

Landis, Jacquelyn, ed. The Cubans. Farmington, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2005. Collection of essays on early Cuban exiles, political unrest and later waves of immigration, the refugee crisis, and the accomplishments of Cuban Americans.

Ojito, Mirta. Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Contains accounts from people who participated in the 1980 exodus from Cuba.

Pedraza, Silvia. Political Disaffection in Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Superb historical study of the role of politics in prompting Cuban immigration.

Perez-Firmat, Gustavo. Life on the Hyphen: The Cuban- American Way. Austin: University of Texas, 1994. Explores how tradition and interpretations of tradition have influenced the identities of Cuban Americans.

See also: Florida; Florida illegal immigration suit; Freedom Airlift; González case; History of immigration after 1891; Latin American immigrants; Little Havana; Mariel boatlift; Miami.

Displaced Persons Act of 1948

Under this law, refugees became for the first time a major factor in U.S. immigration, and the administration of this law would influence subsequent policies on refugees, notably those from communist countries, including Hungary, Cuba, and Vietnam.

European revolutions of 1848

Europe’s revolutions of 1848 did not fulfill their goals for most participants and, as a result, many participants and supporters felt that the future in their European homelands was particularly bleak.

Former Soviet Union immigrants

Immigration to the United States fromseveral of the former Soviet countries is a relatively recent development, but some of the others have long histories of sending people to the United States.

Freedom Airlift

The airlift of hundreds of thousands of Cuban migrants to the United States increased the size and political strength of the Cuban American community while furthering the Cold War foreign policy goals of the United States.

Haitian boat people

Defining the Haitian boat people as economic rather than political refugees allowed the United States to refuse asylum to thousands of Haitians and raised serious questions about human rights standards and treatment of refugees in the United States.

Haitian immigrants

Although Haitians are citizens of the second-oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, an island nation located only seven hundred miles from the United States, they have experienced unique difficulties in finding acceptance as immigrants and have become one of the most abused groups of immigrants in modern American history.

Holocaust

The Event: Systematic attempt by Germany’s Nazi regime to exterminate European Jews

Date: Late 1930’s to mid-1940’s

Location: German-occupied European countries

Significance: During World War II and the years leading up to it, European Jews were the principal victims of German chancellor Adolf Hitler’s genocidal policies. Many fled eastern and western Europe, attempting to enter the United States.

Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis arriving in Belgium in June, 1939, after they were turned away from Cuba. More than one-quarter of the refugees eventually died in the Holocaust. (AP/Wide World Photos)

Between 1933, which saw the Nazis’ rise to power, and Germany’s 1945 surrender that ended World War II, more than 345,000 Jews emigrated from Germany and Austria. Many of them initially fled to countries that were later occupied by Germany, and these Jews subsequently left again or were murdered. Although about 85,000 Jewish refugees reached the United States between March, 1938, and September, 1939, far greater numbers were seeking refuge. However, when U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, the United States was preoccupied with the challenges of the Great Depression—high unemployment and widespread social disillusionment—which contributed to public resistance to any relaxation of immigration quotas. Another factor in opposing specifically Jewish immigration was anti-Semitism. Anti-Jewish sentiment was on the rise during the 1920’s; it increased dramatically during the early 1930’s and reached its peak in America during the late 1930’s and early 1940’s.

Failed Attempts to Help the Jews

In 1939, the United States refused to admit more than 900 refugees who had sailed from Hamburg, Germany, on the SS St. Louis. After being turned away from Cuba, the ship appeared off the coast of Florida. After the United States denied it permission to land, the St. Louis returned to Europe. Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium each accepted some of the passengers as refugees. Of the ship’s 908 passengers, 254 are known to have died in the Holocaust. The event was widely publicized.

News of the true extent of the Holocaust began to reach the United States only in 1941—the year in the United States entered World War II. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of State placed even stricter limits on immigration due to national security concerns. The threat of enemy subversion during the war was a legitimate concern, but the State Department exaggerated the problem and used it as a reason for cutting in half the already small immigration quotas. In 1943, 400 Jewish rabbis marched on Washington, D.C., to draw attention to what was happening to Holocaust victims. Only a handful of politicians met with the marchers, but one of them, Senator William Warren Barbour of New Jersey, proposed legislation that would have permitted 100,000 Holocaust refugees to enter the United States temporarily. Barbour’s bill failed to pass, and another, similar bill, introduced in the House of Representatives by Representative Samuel Dickstein of New York, also failed to pass.

In 1944, President Roosevelt, pressured by government officials and the American Jewish community, took action. He established the War Refugee Board to facilitate the rescue of refugees in imminent danger. The American Joint Distribution Committee and the World Jewish Congress worked with the board to help rescue many thousands of Jews in Hungary, Romania, and other European nations. However, government funding for the board was so small that 91 percent of its work was funded by American Jewish organizations. The board conducted a monthlong campaign to persuade Roosevelt to offer temporary shelter to large numbers of refugees, but it yielded only one result. In the spring of that year, Roosevelt established Fort Ontario, New York, as a free port for refugees. However, only a few thousand were allowed to enter, and these were people from liberated countries who were under no immediate threat of deportation to Germany. Roosevelt’s response to Holocaust immigration was strongly influenced by political concerns. During an era of strong antiimmigration sentiment, any move to increase immigration might well have cost him votes in elections.

Change in Immigration Policies

Harry S. Truman, Roosevelt’s successor as president of the United States from 1945 to 1953, favored an immigration policy that was liberal toward displaced persons, but Congress failed to act on his proposals. On December 22, 1945, Truman issued an executive order, called the Truman Directive, requiring that existing immigration quotas be designated for displaced persons. Although total U.S. immigration figures did not increase, many more displaced persons were admitted to the United States. Between the end of 1945 and early 1947, about 22,950 displaced persons entered the United States under the new Truman Directive. About 16,000 of these refugees were Jewish.

Before existing immigration quotas could be increased, congressional action was necessary. Pressured intensely by lobbying on the part of the American Jewish community, Congress passed legislation in 1948 to admit about 400,000 displaced persons to the United States. Nearly 80,000 of those who arrived, or about 20 percent, were Jewish. Other immigrants included Christians from eastern Europe and the Baltic nations who had worked as forced laborers under the Nazi regime. American entry laws favored agricultural workers to such a degree, however, that Truman found the new law discriminatory to Jews, few of whom were agricultural workers. By the 1950’s, Congress amended the law, but by that time most of the Jewish displaced persons in Europe had entered the new state of Israel, which was established on May 14, 1948.

Thanks in large part to the influx of Jews during and after the Holocaust, the United States emerged as the largest and most culturally innovative Jewish center in the world after World War II. Smaller centers of Jewish population worldwide soon turned to the vigorous Jewish establishments in the United States for help and support. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, Jews in the United States had risen to leadership positions in government, the media, entertainment, popular culture, business, labor relations, law, and the arts.

Sheila Golburgh Johnson

Further Reading

• Abzug, Robert H. America Views the Holocaust, 1933 to 1945: A Brief Documentary History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. This book tries to shed light on such grave questions as what Americans knew about the Holocaust and how they responded as it unfolded. 
• Breitman, Richard, and Alan M. Kraut. American Refugee Policies and European Jewry, 1933-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Carefully documented study that argues that U.S. policy regarding the Holocaust was the product of preexisting restrictive immigration laws and the attitude of U.S. State Department leaders who were committed to a narrow defense of American interests. 
• Novick, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Historical overview of American attitudes toward the Holocaust. A highly controversial book that argues against misuses of Holocaust history and tries to show how contemporary consciousness was formed by political conditions. 
• Wyman, David S. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945. New York: Pantheon, 1984. Contends that British and American political leaders turned down many proposals that could have saved European Jews from death in German concentration camps. 
• _______. Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968. Study of the obstacles that the U.S. Congress erected to prevent the immigration of Jews during the Holocaust. 

See also: American Jewish Committee; Angloconformity; Anti-Semitism; Center for Immigration Studies; Congress, U.S.; Films; German immigrants; Jewish immigrants; Quota systems; Refugee Relief Act of 1953; Refugees; World War II.

Hmong immigrants

Significance: The Hmong are one of the most recent Asian immigrant groups to come to the United States. Their main home is in the northern mountain regions of Laos. The Hmong and other Laotian immigrants were helped by the passage of the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975 in their efforts to relocate after the Vietnam War ended.

Shaman conducting a traditional good-luck ritual for members of a Hmong family preparing to leave a Thai refugee camp for the United States in 2004. (Getty Images)

The Hmong people have no significant history of immigration to the United States before 1970. By the year 2000, Hmong immigrants numbered around 170,000 according to U.S. Census data. When they began migrating to the United States, they were encouraged by various settlement agencies to disperse throughout the country. However, because of their kinship patterns and collectivist nature, they instead tended to congregate within communities where other Hmong lived. Consequently, 89 percent of these immigrants settled in California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan.

American Involvement with the Hmong

During the Vietnam War, Hmong villagers worked alongside the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in their fight against the North Vietnamese in what has been called a "secret war” in Laos. Their assistance on what was supposed to be neutral territory resulted in problems for Hmong veterans on several different levels. After the South Vietnam capital of Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces and the war ended, Laos was taken over by Pathet Lao communist forces, and the Hmong were targeted for reprisals because of their support of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. At risk of severe retaliation from the Lao government, Hmong and other Laotian exiles escaped to Thailand, where they were placed in refugee camps. Upon resettlement to the United States, the Hmong immigrants achieved refugee status largely because of their war efforts on behalf of the Americans as well as their need to escape the communist regime in Laos.

Profile of Hmong immigrants

*Immigrants who obtained legal permanent resident status in the United States. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

Immigration After 1975

In response to the plight of Indochinese communities such as the Hmong after the Vietnam War, the U.S. Congress enacted legislation to enable Southeast Asian refugees to come to the United States. Many immigrants from that region were well educated and possessed valuable job skills. In contrast, however, a large part of the Hmong immigrants were poorly educated and were unskilled workers, as most had been farmers in their home country, and other aspects of the Hmong economy were not highly advanced. These factors, among others, influenced group assimilation processes even though American officials and citizens were initially supportive of Hmong migration.

Between 1981 and 1986, only a few thousand Hmongrefugees came to the United States. Admissions picked up between 1987 and 1994, when more than 50,000 Hmong entered the country. From 2004 until 2006, pressure fromhuman rights groups contributed to the resettlement to the United States of an additional 15,000 Hmong immigrants from a refugee camp in Thailand. Afterward, immigration from northern Laos to the United States slowed.

Hmong in the United States

Hmong communities in the United States have stabilized. U.S. government estimates indicate that between 170,000 and 186,000 Hmong were living in the United States by 2008. However, estimates from nongovernment sources have suggested that there may actually be between 250,000 and 300,000. About 60,000Hmongreside in the state of Minnesota, with about 30,000 in the Minneapolis- St. Paul area alone. The firstHmongrefugees came from a subsistence and agrarian background, but later waves of immigrants came with some knowledge of technology and Western culture. Overall, the American Hmong population was young and highly urban by the year 2009. In fact, the Minneapolis- St. Paul area has the largest Hmong urban population in the world. The majority of Hmong Minnesotans have already become second- or third-generation American-born citizens.

With a relatively short history in the United States, the Hmong still struggle with cultural identity issues. The initial culture shock that occurred during their first wave of immigration resulted in a slower assimilation rate than was anticipated, even though some younger Hmong Americans adapted relatively quickly. The Hmong have not abandoned their collectivist family structures and this has helped them achieve a level of economic stability. Like those of Vietnamese immigrants, Hmong families often pool resources and incomes in order to buy homes, businesses, and cars.

In Minnesota, Hmong residents generate more than $100 million in revenues annually and entrepreneurs have successfully revitalized the University Avenue area of St. Paul. Even though the first wave of Hmong immigrants was not as prepared to cope with the technologically advanced capitalistic society of the United States, over the years they have become upwardly mobile, a situation that indicates a positive future.

Dianne Dentice

Further Reading

Barr, Linda. Long Road to Freedom: Journey of the Hmong. Bloomington, Minn.: Red Brick Learning, 2004. Account of the plight of Hmong refugees during the early twenty-first century. 

Faderman, Lillian, and Ghia Xiong. I Begin My Life All Over: The Hmong and the American Immigrant Experience. Boston: Beacon, 1998. Collection of thirty-five Hmong immigrant narratives that emphasizes generational differences. 

Keown-Bomar, Julie. Kinship Networks Among Hmong-American Refugees. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2004. Thorough sociological study of Hmong immigrants. 

Mote, Sue Murphy. Hmong and American: Stories of Transition to a Strange Land. Jefferson, N.C.: Mc- Farland, 2004. Another collection of Hmong immigrant narratives. 

Parrillo, Vincent. Strangers to These Shores. 9th ed. Boston: Allyn&Bacon, 2008. General treatment of race and ethnic relations with a section on Laotian immigration that emphasizes Hmong immigrants. 

Schaefer, Richard T. Racial and Ethnic Groups. 11th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2007. General textbook on American ethnic groups that includes a case study of a Hmong community in Wausau, Wisconsin. 

Sherman, Spencer. "The Hmong in America: Laotian Refugees in the Land of the Giants.” National Geographic (October, 1988).Well-illustrated description of Hmong communities in North Carolina and California. 

See also: Asian immigrants; Immigration waves; Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975; Laotian immigrants; Minnesota; Refugees; Tennessee; Thai immigrants; Vietnam War.

Immigration Act of 1924

Immigration law

The gatekeeper of the borders of the United States, federal immigration law determines who may enter the country, how long they may stay, their status, their rights and duties while in the United States, and how they may become resident aliens or American citizens.

Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975

Strongly supported by President Gerald R. Ford and opposed by those who feared an influx of Southeast Asian refugees after the end of the conflict in Vietnam

Jewish immigrants

Refugee status

A refugee is a special category of immigrant not subject to regular immigration quotas.

Mariel Boatlift

The Mariel Boatlift of 1980 marked the beginning of the third great wave of CUBAN IMMIGRATION to the United States.

Guest children

With Europe engulfed in war starting in 1939, charitable organizations petitioned the Canadian government to provide asylum for child refugees, including Jews living in Britain, France, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal.

Elian Gonzalez (1993– ) Cuban immigrant

Elián González became the focus of an intense public debate over America’s Cuban immigration policy after surviving a shipwreck in which his mother died during a November 1999 escape from Cuba.