Asian Americans Confront U.S. Law & Policy: A Case Study of the Vietnamese Impact on Defining the "Refugee"
U.S. Law and Race Initiative
Author
11/25/2024
Added
20
Plays
Description
Join us for a conversation on Refugees and immigration. Our guest, Dr. Linda Ho Peche, and host, Dr. Donna D. Anderson, will provide an in-depth look at the role Vietnamese migrants played in creating the current status of refugees.
Searchable Transcript
Toggle between list and paragraph view.
- [00:00:02.670]Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for the second
- [00:00:05.730]U.S. Law and Race Initiative webinar in our fall 2024 series.
- [00:00:10.150]My name is Emily Binder and I'm a first year PhD student
- [00:00:13.190]in history at the University of Nebraska studying American
- [00:00:16.129]transnational and digital history.
- [00:00:18.550]Launched with support in January of 2023, the
- [00:00:21.370]U.S. Law and Race Initiative explores new approaches to
- [00:00:24.250]research, teaching, and public engagement with the history
- [00:00:27.210]of law, race, and racialization in the United States.
- [00:00:30.430]Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the initiative brings
- [00:00:33.110]together large university teaching programs, immersive new forms
- [00:00:36.490]of digital media content, and community partnership storytelling
- [00:00:39.870]to connect Americans to their history in ways that
- [00:00:42.390]repair the fractures in our national understanding of
- [00:00:45.010]race and racialization.
- [00:00:46.450]Dr. Will Thomas, Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones, and Dr. Katrina
- [00:00:50.250]Jagodinsky are the faculty leads on the U.S. Law and Race
- [00:00:53.070]Initiative, along with an array of expert partners in the
- [00:00:56.290]College of Arts and Sciences and College of Law at UNL.
- [00:00:59.470]We are hosting a series of webinars deepening
- [00:01:01.450]the national conversation on the legal history of race.
- [00:01:04.890]Today, we are excited to host a discussion about Vietnamese immigration and
- [00:01:08.650]the creation of refugee status.
- [00:01:10.390]We are honored to have with us today Dr. Linda Ho Peche, the
- [00:01:13.950]director of the Digital Humanities Project
- [00:01:16.610]called Vietnamese in the Diaspora Digital Archive.
- [00:01:19.650]Dr. Ho Peche received her PhD from the University of Texas
- [00:01:22.510]at Austin in 2013. She's a cultural anthropologist
- [00:01:26.210]and recently published her co-edited book, Toward a
- [00:01:29.450]Framework for Vietnamese American Studies, History,
- [00:01:32.010]Community, and Memory, that seeks to understand the
- [00:01:34.190]Vietnamese American diaspora.
- [00:01:36.310]Our host, Dr. Donna Doan Anderson, is the Mellon
- [00:01:39.310]Research Assistant Professor in the U.S. Law and Race
- [00:01:42.070]Initiative. She earned her PhD in History with an
- [00:01:45.930]emphasis on Asian American Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Dr.
- [00:01:50.170]Anderson's work focuses on sections of land policy and
- [00:01:54.390]immigration in rural America. Prior to going to school
- [00:01:57.290]for her PhD, Dr. Anderson taught at Lincoln High
- [00:01:59.730]and earned her MA from Lincoln's
- [00:02:01.430]Nebraska Wesleyan University.
- [00:02:03.410]Dr. Ho Peche will lecture for about 30 minutes before Dr.
- [00:02:07.190]Anderson leads the Q&A portion. Please feel free
- [00:02:09.710]to submit your questions at any time using the chat on Zoom.
- [00:02:17.600]Is that my cue?
- [00:02:19.040]Yes. Hi.
- [00:02:20.320]Hi, everyone. Good morning from Fuller, Houston. I
- [00:02:24.480]hope you all are enjoying a good, nice fall
- [00:02:27.700]day here. And thank you so much, Dr. Jones, Dr. Thomas, Ann
- [00:02:33.020]and Emily for coordinating this.
- [00:02:34.920]It's really exciting to be here today. So today we're going
- [00:02:39.060]to focus on the ways in which U.S. policy and laws develop
- [00:02:42.540]through the ever-changing understandings of race.
- [00:02:45.620]And I'm going to share my screen in order to bring to
- [00:02:56.440]you a discussion on this topic.
- [00:03:00.560]So today we're discussing Asian Americans confronting U.S. law and policy post 1965
- [00:03:06.760]and the impact of Vietnamese impact on defining what we consider the refugee.
- [00:03:15.880]So this week's focus in this course is on Asian Americans and I'll be
- [00:03:21.160]using the lens of the concept of the refugee as it
- [00:03:24.540]pertains to Vietnamese Americans.
- [00:03:26.700]My background is in cultural anthropology, so
- [00:03:29.480]I tend to look at a lot of these topics through the prism of
- [00:03:32.440]cultural meaning, which I'll be doing today.
- [00:03:36.480]So what we can expect today, I'll do a recap of the
- [00:03:42.160]main points of Monday's course lecture and review the objectives for today.
- [00:03:48.700]What I really want to do is contextualize how the
- [00:03:52.300]U.S. has defined refugee policy as well as the immigrant tropes
- [00:03:56.400]that are often used in popular discourse.
- [00:04:00.040]And we'll focus on the particular case of Vietnamese migration post-war. Then
- [00:04:05.740]we'll come back and take another look at
- [00:04:08.400]the immigration tropes that tend to form our
- [00:04:13.740]discussions and discourses on refugees.
- [00:04:16.060]And we'll conclude and hopefully have a good amount of time for Q&A.
- [00:04:22.200]Alrighty, so on Monday, Dr. Anderson's lecture was really interesting and I'd
- [00:04:28.040]like to do a recap of what she offered us to think about.
- [00:04:32.260]So in the context of all these laws and policies relating to
- [00:04:36.440]controlling Asian immigration in the 19th century and then
- [00:04:40.540]going into the 20th century, she had us examine
- [00:04:43.660]the social construction of race.
- [00:04:45.900]Specifically as it impacted the development of
- [00:04:48.540]the legal categories of US citizenship and naturalization.
- [00:04:53.200]And as you'll remember, we focused on the Supreme
- [00:04:56.340]Court's rulings on Ozawa in 1922 and Thind in 1923.
- [00:05:02.820]And looked at the ways in which these rulings cemented Indian and
- [00:05:08.800]Japanese immigrants as Asiatics in contrast
- [00:05:12.420]to whites and illegal concept of whiteness.
- [00:05:15.520]And it really shows the ways in which Asians at the time were seen
- [00:05:20.700]as permanent aliens whose legal rights, access
- [00:05:24.160]to capital and mobility were vastly restricted.
- [00:05:28.960]And we also begin to see how Asians themselves
- [00:05:31.640]employed markers and identifiers of what constituted whiteness to make
- [00:05:36.980]their own claims to citizenship and belonging.
- [00:05:40.540]So for me, ultimately, what that lecture did
- [00:05:47.520]is have me think about how historical constructions
- [00:05:51.080]of race in the U.S. have always been about defining who is
- [00:05:55.480]worthy of being an American.
- [00:05:58.360]And thus granted naturalization, citizenship
- [00:06:02.000]at its core cultural belonging.
- [00:06:07.990]These meanings are constantly negotiated and
- [00:06:10.890]I think I heard somebody on Monday talk about the way that it's
- [00:06:14.930]morally defined and I agree with that.
- [00:06:18.150]They're negotiated in courtrooms, in legal policy, as well
- [00:06:22.590]as in the popular imagination, this concept of who belongs.
- [00:06:27.290]So some objectives for today. I'd like to contextualize
- [00:06:32.530]the definition of refugee, both historically and in popular conception.
- [00:06:38.010]I want us to examine different Vietnamese migrations and their
- [00:06:42.810]impact on U.S. policies.
- [00:06:44.830]And then I want to explore the question of how do popular tropes
- [00:06:51.010]and legal concepts of the refugee specifically
- [00:06:54.550]relate to Asian racialization in the U.S.
- [00:06:59.950]And I've talked a little bit about cultural belonging. For any of you
- [00:07:05.790]that are interested in issues of cultural citizenship, Aihwa Ong is a great read.
- [00:07:14.170]So Vietnamese Americans as refugees became a particular kind
- [00:07:20.510]of special immigration case, but still lies within the broader
- [00:07:26.790]framework of race and racialization in America.
- [00:07:31.810]And thus, let's go back a little bit to sort of contextualize how we get there.
- [00:07:40.760]So after years and years of Chinese exclusion, the U.S. in the
- [00:07:47.580]40s finds itself an ally with China against Nazi
- [00:07:52.080]Germany and Imperial Japan.
- [00:07:54.840]As Dr. Anderson discussed on Monday, it became really important
- [00:07:58.720]for white Americans to tell the difference between
- [00:08:01.100]Chinese and Japanese.
- [00:08:04.280]Going in so far as publicizing sort of pseudo scientific
- [00:08:09.000]racial details, distinguishing both.
- [00:08:15.640]But in the popular imagination, the Chinese
- [00:08:17.460]go from being cast as invaders to being allies and friends, seen here in
- [00:08:24.340]this propaganda piece by the U.S. government.
- [00:08:33.110]So while the U.S. government is condemning the Nazi doctrine of racial
- [00:08:38.650]superiority, it is also arguing for the defeat of racism as one
- [00:08:44.790]of the reasons for why we fight, seen in this theatrical war
- [00:08:49.210]series and propaganda that the State Department put out at the time.
- [00:08:56.610]And so what else is going on in U.S. society?
- [00:08:59.250]I'll have you think about, that would
- [00:09:00.810]problematize this justification?
- [00:09:05.720]And... I can't see... Well, I offer that as a question. Perhaps we'll do that
- [00:09:10.840]at the end. So we're talking about the recent massive incarceration and
- [00:09:17.000]mistreatment of Japanese Americans.
- [00:09:19.360]What else is going on during that time? The continued segregation of
- [00:09:23.600]Black Americans in the South, fighting Jim Crow
- [00:09:27.040]laws, continuing that, the anti-Semitic politics that refuse
- [00:09:32.000]refuge to European Jews.
- [00:09:36.380]So during that time, 1943 specifically, Congress
- [00:09:42.580]votes to repeal the Chinese Exclusion Act.
- [00:09:45.400]But then in the next two years, establishes immigration quotas
- [00:09:49.260]for different portions of Asia, specifically India and the Philippines.
- [00:09:59.150]So continuing post-World War II, this is really
- [00:10:04.590]when the definition of refugees beginning to take shape.
- [00:10:09.830]The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- [00:10:13.090]is the first international agreement on asylum.
- [00:10:18.690]And the 1951 United Nations Convention specifically relates to
- [00:10:23.930]the status of refugees.
- [00:10:26.550]So on the international stage, we are beginning to
- [00:10:30.090]think about the displacement of peoples and our responsibilities.
- [00:10:38.760]Meanwhile, in the U.S., we continue to address
- [00:10:43.960]immigration issues through a very ad hoc system.
- [00:10:53.460]In 1945, there's a presidential directive authorized
- [00:10:57.080]to expedite the admissions of displaced persons.
- [00:11:01.440]It still has to be within the framework of
- [00:11:04.540]existing U.S. immigration law.
- [00:11:07.620]In 1948, the Displaced Persons Act addresses the seven million displaced
- [00:11:13.740]persons in Europe. This is the result of World War II.
- [00:11:17.960]This act allowed refugees to enter the U.S., again within the constraints
- [00:11:23.700]of the existing quota system.
- [00:11:27.320]And also, the law required that admitted displaced persons have to find a place
- [00:11:33.600]to live and a job that would not replace a worker
- [00:11:36.940]already in the country.
- [00:11:41.320]In 1950, other things that are going on, there is the Emergency
- [00:11:45.320]Detention Act, which basically allows the feds to detain anyone without due process.
- [00:11:52.800]And this is citing internal security emergencies. So what does that remind us
- [00:12:00.420]of? You can imagine Asian communities being
- [00:12:03.760]very concerned about this kind of legislation.
- [00:12:06.620]And of course, there's a fear. There's a fear of the Communist
- [00:12:09.740]Party. There's a fear of organized labor, as well as sort of
- [00:12:14.500]the foreigner and the enemy within our borders.
- [00:12:18.160]And we're still very much worried about the selection of preferable
- [00:12:22.160]immigrants at the time.
- [00:12:24.720]And so in 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act upholds that national origins quota.
- [00:12:32.600]It allows Asians to become citizens, but then contains
- [00:12:36.700]no provisions, specifically covering the resettlement of refugees yet.
- [00:12:44.500]And in 1953, the U.S. authorized about 200,000 special non-quota
- [00:12:51.740]immigrant visas for refugees and escapees, specifically
- [00:12:55.380]from communist countries.
- [00:12:58.200]So we've had to do a lot of patchwork since there's not an overall
- [00:13:02.160]arching legislation on refugees specifically.
- [00:13:08.120]And in 1957, there is the Chinese Confession Program.
- [00:13:12.900]So this one allows the normalization of
- [00:13:17.540]Chinese Americans, which up until this point has been patchwork.
- [00:13:22.360]And it's really meant to shut down the paper sun system, so
- [00:13:29.260]the system of fraudulent paperwork that allow Chinese Americans
- [00:13:34.620]to gain documentation.
- [00:13:38.380]But really, it's about not allowing what the
- [00:13:42.880]fear is of communist spies entering the country.
- [00:13:47.240]So other separate acts, different patchwork
- [00:13:51.780]legislation and programs attempt to deal with the
- [00:13:55.400]global displacement of peoples globally.
- [00:13:59.060]So we have the Hungarian Escapee Program, the Azorean Refugee Act, the Fair
- [00:14:05.240]Share Refugee Act to deal with the Armenians, Cuban refugees,
- [00:14:11.480]those in Hong Kong.
- [00:14:12.340]So this is still kind of a patchwork way to deal with
- [00:14:16.180]the displacement of peoples.
- [00:14:20.000]It's not until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that we really
- [00:14:29.000]think about the resettlement of refugees and
- [00:14:32.980]this new category of conditional entrance, right?
- [00:14:38.340]We're still defining refugee in terms of geography, for example,
- [00:14:43.000]from the Middle East or political regime, specifically
- [00:14:46.400]from communist countries.
- [00:14:48.560]So we're not using sort of this international human
- [00:14:51.200]rights language yet.
- [00:14:54.800]However, this is one of the most critical immigration acts
- [00:14:57.840]that continue to shape the demographics of America for many years.
- [00:15:02.900]Very much a result of sort of the civil rights
- [00:15:06.460]movements and this move to eliminate race
- [00:15:09.440]discrimination in immigration.
- [00:15:11.520]It also set up different kinds of system of preferences, family
- [00:15:16.180]reunification, the ability to immigrate through employment,
- [00:15:21.560]and then, of course, functionally repeals the 1882
- [00:15:25.660]Chinese Exclusion Act, finally.
- [00:15:31.060]So during this time, enter the model minority myth.
- [00:15:39.010]What the Immigration Act of 1965 ostensibly does is
- [00:15:44.750]create a sort of identity crisis in the United States.
- [00:15:50.290]If you'll remember, there are demands for equality,
- [00:15:54.670]economic equity, growing civil rights movements, women's movements,
- [00:15:59.290]labor movements, and all of this
- [00:16:03.490]sort of coalesce around what Robert Lee, the scholar, talks about the three
- [00:16:11.650]major fears at the time and the emergence of this
- [00:16:16.250]Model Minority Myth, right?
- [00:16:18.610]Despite that there was an active Asian American movement,
- [00:16:22.030]Asians were popularly seen as this silent minority, a perceived
- [00:16:27.330]sort of acquiescence to the status quo.
- [00:16:30.550]When in fact, this passiveness reflected, in my opinion, very justifiable and
- [00:16:37.570]very deep fear of trauma from decades of exclusion,
- [00:16:43.250]incarceration, and discrimination.
- [00:16:46.830]And so these three black fears at the time, what are these?
- [00:16:50.270]So he calls them the "black menace of race," right, and miscegenation.
- [00:16:55.770]The first and foremost, he claims that the Model Minority is at its core
- [00:17:01.530]anti-Black, right? We're talking a time period,
- [00:17:05.750]the Watts riots were going on in '64.
- [00:17:09.810]There's still all the movements, segregation in the South.
- [00:17:15.710]The next one is the white menace of homosexuality, right? In 1953,
- [00:17:21.890]Eisenhower issued an executive order banning
- [00:17:24.490]gay men and lesbians from federal employment.
- [00:17:27.730]So there's this real fear of the degradation of
- [00:17:31.490]the typical nuclear family and thus of the nation itself.
- [00:17:39.420]And this is related to sort of the morality laws that
- [00:17:42.320]come into place in the 19th and early 20th century, which I
- [00:17:46.480]won't have time to get into, but this is the sort
- [00:17:50.180]of coalescing of what white heteronormative
- [00:17:54.060]American identity is at the time.
- [00:17:58.660]And last but not least, the red menace of communism. So the
- [00:18:04.200]real fear of the Communist Party, of organized labor
- [00:18:08.240]movements, and this sort of flips as well our
- [00:18:13.840]relationship with China once again.
- [00:18:15.540]Communist China now becomes the enemy, and post-World War
- [00:18:21.520]II Japan becomes a U.S. partner, right? Specifically in this
- [00:18:27.740]Pacific Rim strategy for economic expansion there, and this includes
- [00:18:32.920]Southeast Asia, a major source of profit for American investment.
- [00:18:39.840]So if you'd like further reading, there's an article by Robert Lee called
- [00:18:45.900]"The Cold War Origins of the Model Minority Myth"
- [00:18:48.040]that is really interesting.
- [00:18:51.060]So we do finally get at least geographically to the origins
- [00:18:56.200]of our subject today, right? We're still sort of
- [00:19:00.240]contextualizing getting there.
- [00:19:04.330]During this time, Southeast Asia became a focus for U.S.
- [00:19:08.350]foreign policy, and the reason for the U.S. involvement in the
- [00:19:12.430]Southeast Asian conflicts, including Vietnam's
- [00:19:15.330]civil wars. The bombing campaigns from '64 to '68 really fueled
- [00:19:23.890]an anti-war sentiment in the U.S.
- [00:19:39.390]And perhaps guessing at an impending refugee crisis, in
- [00:19:47.390]1968, President Jimmy Carter acceded to the 1967 United Nations
- [00:19:54.610]Protocol relating to the status of refugees.
- [00:19:57.550]So he continues, however, to use his own definition of refugee, which
- [00:20:03.210]is very much about outlining it in terms of U.S. immigration policy.
- [00:20:12.830]So a great exodus ensues after talks break down in
- [00:20:17.370]1973, the U.S. turns over fighting to the South Vietnamese troops,
- [00:20:24.530]the U.S. exchanges prisoners with the North, and pieces out. South
- [00:20:29.630]Vietnam Falls in April of 1975, and a great exodus ensued.
- [00:20:37.250]The first set of displaced peoples consisted
- [00:20:42.290]of political leaders, government officials, about 175,000 urban,
- [00:20:49.910]middle class South Vietnamese that were relatively skilled,
- [00:20:54.690]most knew English, they were urbanized and educated.
- [00:21:00.510]First, they fled in Guam in various ways, and
- [00:21:06.210]then arrived in the U.S. and settled in temporary
- [00:21:09.510]camps in Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania, as
- [00:21:13.690]well as Camp Pendleton in California, among
- [00:21:16.530]other resettlement camps.
- [00:21:19.270]And during this time, France and Canada also took some, but many nations
- [00:21:25.630]felt that this was really an American problem. So
- [00:21:34.720]the refugee exodus continuing.
- [00:21:39.760]The U.S. government, motivated by popular demand to
- [00:21:44.780]take responsibility for a situation created in part
- [00:21:48.420]by its own military intervention, developed refugee policies
- [00:21:53.020]in recognition of this broad displacement of people.
- [00:21:55.720]So we have the 1975 Indochina Migration and Refugee Act.
- [00:22:01.560]It allowed approximately 130,000 refugees from Cambodia,
- [00:22:06.720]Laos, and South Vietnam to enter the U.S. with special status.
- [00:22:11.300]It established a domestic resettlement program
- [00:22:13.720]and provided financial assistance and relocation aid.
- [00:22:19.080]In 1977, the amendment extended the period of assistance
- [00:22:23.220]and allowed for refugees to later become permanent residents.
- [00:22:27.980]And so simultaneously, popular representations created this very
- [00:22:35.220]morally defined category of the worthy refugee, centered on
- [00:22:40.000]the representations of the Vietnamese, often using images
- [00:22:44.440]of women and children in calls for government action.
- [00:22:48.220]So what are these tropes of the victim? The traumatized
- [00:22:53.380]in need of our benevolence, the voiceless in need of a
- [00:22:58.360]voice against the evils of communism, and the
- [00:23:02.000]worthy, and specifically worthy because of a willingness
- [00:23:08.960]to assimilate and carried American values.
- [00:23:13.320]Most spoke English and French, and so this was an acceptable group of
- [00:23:19.700]refugees. Almost immediately, at least somewhat immediately,
- [00:23:29.050]there is a sense of compassion fatigue.
- [00:23:32.970]In the post-war back in Vietnam, they faced economic sanctions and
- [00:23:42.970]widespread famine, and about 340,000 South Vietnamese were forced
- [00:23:49.070]to re-education camps.
- [00:23:51.510]And starting in about 1976, about 400,000 people fled the situation
- [00:23:58.750]and the political repression.
- [00:24:01.270]And these folks ended up escaping by any means.
- [00:24:06.010]So by boat to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia,
- [00:24:10.190]Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong. The second
- [00:24:13.410]large-scale exodus was comprised of folks that were less educated
- [00:24:20.490]and had more rural backgrounds.
- [00:24:22.930]At this time, trafficking refugees began to be big business, and
- [00:24:29.310]compassion fatigue set in across a lot of the South Asian countries.
- [00:24:35.670]These self-proclaimed boat people ended up all
- [00:24:39.190]across Southeast Asia, and the scope of the exodus intensified.
- [00:24:44.590]So we've got 10,000 Lao and Hmong that
- [00:24:48.210]became illegal in Thailand.
- [00:24:51.390]Thailand started to basically just turn boat people away,
- [00:24:56.750]literally turn them away. Malaysia considered boat
- [00:24:59.830]people all illegal, and 360,000 Cambodians were
- [00:25:05.030]repatriated from Hong Kong.
- [00:25:07.010]So the chart on the left shows you the repatriation of
- [00:25:14.090]Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians between '75 and '97.
- [00:25:18.710]So in response, the 1979 Geneva Conference set up legal
- [00:25:23.390]departures to separate political refugees from economic
- [00:25:27.810]refugees, to make sense and to create categories
- [00:25:33.610]of worthy displaced peoples.
- [00:25:37.890]And they came up with the Orderly Departure Program, the ODP,
- [00:25:41.090]under the auspices of the United Nations High
- [00:25:44.110]Commissioner for Refugees.
- [00:25:48.250]So under this program, Southeast Asians agreed to provide
- [00:25:51.870]temporary asylum, Vietnam agreed to promote orderly departures, and
- [00:25:57.310]Western countries agreed to accelerate resettlement.
- [00:26:01.870]By 1980, the U.S. law was finally brought into compliance
- [00:26:05.690]with international definitions of refugee, and they began the resettlement process.
- [00:26:10.610]But by 1994, the U.S. stopped accepting refugees
- [00:26:14.950]from Cambodia, and then from Laos and Vietnam
- [00:26:19.070]in '97, and a very different set of representations guided public opinions
- [00:26:24.730]about these later migrations.
- [00:26:28.850]We've got changing perspectives once again.
- [00:26:32.530]So to give you a perspective of the great demographic changes, Vietnamese immigrants
- [00:26:39.990]were only identified separately by the Office of Immigration
- [00:26:44.050]Statistics in the 50s, when 335 people of Vietnamese
- [00:26:51.710]descent were admitted as refugees.
- [00:26:54.130]The number had risen to 832,765 by 2003.
- [00:27:01.730]In the 10 years of 1980 and 1990, alone, the population grew
- [00:27:07.770]142%, and most foreign-born.
- [00:27:13.050]So almost immediately, the subsequent migrations
- [00:27:16.190]of Vietnamese immigrants faced cultural conflict.
- [00:27:19.830]Although sometimes lumped in with the acceptable Asians as model minorities,
- [00:27:25.270]but just as often cast as those draining public
- [00:27:28.670]resources or unassimilable.
- [00:27:34.340]And anti-immigrant sentiment in the 80s was fueled really by a declining
- [00:27:38.180]economy and led on the attacks on Chinese, Japanese,
- [00:27:42.560]and Vietnamese communities.
- [00:27:45.280]So I'd like to return to common immigration tropes, both those
- [00:27:53.880]that seem to be positive and those that are more problematic.
- [00:28:00.760]So there's this sense of a nation of immigrants,
- [00:28:04.540]right? This sort of falseness of
- [00:28:07.740]an equitable multiculturalism.
- [00:28:10.660]The sense that we're all immigrants, right? This romantic notion,
- [00:28:14.640]of course, that ignores colonialism and all kinds of issues.
- [00:28:20.380]There's the American dream, right? They're coming for the American dream. But
- [00:28:24.800]really, we only mean that for those who are willing to assimilate.
- [00:28:30.000]And then this Model Minority Myth comes in that we're looking at
- [00:28:35.960]groups pitted against other ethnics, and seen as
- [00:28:41.700]self-reliant, passive-obedient kind of minorities, right? That everybody
- [00:28:47.560]else is compared to.
- [00:28:50.900]There are the metaphor of floods and waves, right?
- [00:28:55.300]That threaten to overwhelm American cities. There's
- [00:28:58.980]a language of invasion of immigrants taking jobs and taking over.
- [00:29:05.760]And then there is this interestingly consuming kinds of
- [00:29:10.020]discourses, right? You start being public resources,
- [00:29:15.060]literally eating pets. We have this kind of language as well.
- [00:29:22.650]And I'm going to end by talking about one
- [00:29:27.630]final anecdote, something that happened early on in the
- [00:29:31.910]resettlement of Vietnamese communities here, right?
- [00:29:35.330]So in 1979, many folks did a second sort of move to places
- [00:29:44.050]where they found other Vietnamese communities
- [00:29:47.990]or industries that they were familiar with.
- [00:29:52.610]And many Vietnamese took up shrimping in Texas. And so
- [00:29:58.070]there was a growing anti-Vietnamese sentiment in that industry specifically.
- [00:30:04.490]It had to do with sort of cultural understandings
- [00:30:08.930]of how close your shrimping boat should be and should
- [00:30:11.770]they tap each other on the water.
- [00:30:14.290]And anyway, you know, there were these stereotypes that also fueled that
- [00:30:20.870]anti-Vietnamese sentiment and a real worry that they were taking over the industry.
- [00:30:27.030]And violent confrontations ended up with one white male dead. Eventually,
- [00:30:33.530]two of the Vietnamese defendants were acquitted on self-defense at that time.
- [00:30:39.530]But the conflicts only grew. In 1981, armed clansmen began
- [00:30:45.570]these boat parades. They were openly displaying
- [00:30:49.290]weapons. They were hanging effigies of Vietnamese fishermen.
- [00:30:53.610]They were burning boats.
- [00:30:54.630]And they created a group of secret paramilitary groups called
- [00:30:59.170]the Texas Emergency Reserve.
- [00:31:02.710]And so in response to this, the Vietnamese Fishermen's Association filed a
- [00:31:07.850]class action civil lawsuit.
- [00:31:10.170]And this was with the help of the Southern Poverty Law
- [00:31:13.250]Center. And lawyers argued that the Klan violated several
- [00:31:16.950]civil rights statutes.
- [00:31:17.930]The 13 and 14th Amendments, common law torts on assault
- [00:31:22.190]and personal property, the Sherman Antitrust Act,
- [00:31:26.350]and a little-known Texas law prohibiting the
- [00:31:28.970]establishment of private armies.
- [00:31:31.830]And they won. And so I think the story is a reminder to take
- [00:31:40.260]sort of these popular discourses and tropes
- [00:31:42.360]about immigrants and the discourses very seriously, right?
- [00:31:49.220]They're just words. They can create an environment
- [00:31:52.340]of vitriol and often can have violent consequences.
- [00:31:59.740]And something that's promising is really thinking
- [00:32:04.920]about the fact that the Southern Poverty Law
- [00:32:08.700]Center provides an opportunity to think about intersection
- [00:32:14.380]of organizing and what that might look like.
- [00:32:20.660]And so to finish, I did want to think about
- [00:32:25.920]that first overarching question. So how do popular tropes and legal
- [00:32:30.880]concepts of the refugee relate to Asian racialization?
- [00:32:38.660]And before we get there, I did want to talk a little bit about what we
- [00:32:43.140]didn't get into. I mean, there's so much. I feel like it
- [00:32:45.920]was super, super duper fast.
- [00:32:50.690]But relates to this topic as well. So I couldn't get into
- [00:32:55.030]the morality laws relating to immigrants, right? And
- [00:32:57.870]specifically gendered policies that related to Asian and
- [00:33:02.950]controlling Asian immigrant women.
- [00:33:05.950]And the policing of sexuality. This was, you know, starting the 19th century into
- [00:33:12.070]the 20th century, particularly targeting Asian laborers,
- [00:33:17.370]right? And this continuing fear of miscegenation.
- [00:33:20.910]Very little touched on Asian American activism and social movements,
- [00:33:26.950]particularly where they were defending acts of violence and racism.
- [00:33:34.750]And then, of course, on a broader level, and
- [00:33:37.190]we can talk about this maybe in discussion, but
- [00:33:38.830]issues of how Asians have been slotted at different
- [00:33:41.950]times in different places on the U.S. racial continuum.
- [00:33:45.050]So, you know, continuing that conversation from Monday in terms of where
- [00:33:51.590]are Asians more white? Are they more Black? Are they in between?
- [00:33:58.710]At some point in time, Filipinos were illustrated and seen as Black. And at some
- [00:34:05.570]times, Asians were seen as white, right? As
- [00:34:09.830]we saw with some of those legal cases.
- [00:34:13.969]So that, I'm going to hand it over. Maybe I'll leave that question up
- [00:34:21.909]for us to chat about. And I don't know how to turn this over.
- [00:34:32.350]I think I'll just take it from here. Thank you, Dr. Ho Peche. Everyone
- [00:34:37.130]give Dr. Ho Peche a round of applause, whether you can do it on your
- [00:34:40.929]little emojis or you can turn on your cams.
- [00:34:43.690]And that was a really excellent lecture. And I know there's probably
- [00:34:46.790]so many questions. But as a moderator, I will just go ahead and
- [00:34:51.170]take the first one because I will allow students, if you have
- [00:34:54.909]questions, please drop them into the chat. I'll be happy to ask them.
- [00:34:59.350]But to give you some time to think about this, right? And
- [00:35:02.630]this relates to your last question, too. There
- [00:35:05.390]are so many dominant kind of stereotypical figures
- [00:35:08.610]in Asian American historical context.
- [00:35:12.050]Like on Tuesday, my lecture was talking about the
- [00:35:13.990]alien, particularly, and then you're talking about the refugee.
- [00:35:18.010]Do you see that? Are these terms connected? And
- [00:35:21.630]in what ways? How do you see that connection?
- [00:35:24.350]I think that's a really interesting question
- [00:35:30.080]of the definition of alien and the definition
- [00:35:35.240]of refugee, particularly because, you know, providing
- [00:35:41.080]refuge is a very different kind of purpose.
- [00:35:46.220]You know, on the one hand, we're creating a
- [00:35:48.660]category of alienness, right, who is not part
- [00:35:51.700]of the U.S. geographically allowed to be within our
- [00:35:55.120]boundaries, but not definitely not part of the American nation.
- [00:36:01.400]And the concept of the refugee really comes about at a
- [00:36:05.520]point in time, post World War II, where we're really kind of
- [00:36:10.680]cementing different kinds of borders after post World War II, and thinking
- [00:36:16.880]in terms of our responsibility to welcome different groups
- [00:36:23.360]and displaced peoples.
- [00:36:25.540]And so, providing refuge and this concept of human rights, you know, it's
- [00:36:32.600]very different from thinking about who is alien at a time where we're
- [00:36:37.260]creating a national identity that accepts Black Americans as from here, but
- [00:36:46.240]creates another category of alienness for...
- [00:36:49.440]they're here, but not really from here.
- [00:36:53.340]So that's how I was thinking about it. But I'd
- [00:36:55.880]love to hear any other ways of thinking about this.
- [00:37:00.680]Yeah, I definitely think it has something to do with the concept of Asians
- [00:37:05.560]as forever foreigners, right? Like, no matter
- [00:37:07.820]what you do, no matter if you're born in the country, no matter if
- [00:37:10.760]you're, you know, you have citizenship, no matter if you perform, you know, the
- [00:37:15.460]ideals of Americanness, you're always foreign, right?
- [00:37:18.680]So the alien is almost one side of that foreignness, and
- [00:37:22.840]then the refugee, to me, is the other side. Like, they're
- [00:37:25.400]are two sides of the same coin, essentially.
- [00:37:29.080]Which is that you are here, but you are not of
- [00:37:31.820]here, right? Which is what you're getting to with those legal constructs.
- [00:37:36.740]Okay, so we have a question from Riley, and I'll just read it out here.
- [00:37:41.240]So, Dr. Peche, you mentioned in the beginning that you came
- [00:37:44.100]from an anthropological background.
- [00:37:45.920]To what extent do you believe that the law's past acted as a
- [00:37:50.320]culmination of societal hatred towards the various refugee groups
- [00:37:54.120]coming into the States?
- [00:37:55.740]Or would you argue that these laws shaped the ways
- [00:37:58.140]in which American society acted towards and treated these refugee groups?
- [00:38:04.600]In terms of sort of an anthropological perspective, I think
- [00:38:08.580]it's really important to note that the late 19th century is
- [00:38:12.020]when anthropologists were really getting at the pseudoscientific descriptions of
- [00:38:19.860]how different, how race sort of determined different
- [00:38:26.140]characteristics and attributes.
- [00:38:28.020]And these, I think you mentioned something in the last lecture
- [00:38:32.500]about common knowledge, and this was actually brought up in court, right?
- [00:38:37.720]This normative common knowledge that we were all just supposed
- [00:38:41.560]to assume, right? Well, what was this? This was really
- [00:38:46.040]seeping in to the courtroom, this idea that there was
- [00:38:51.260]a very specific set of attributes and that race was really
- [00:38:56.100]a determining factor of the kind of, you know, person that
- [00:39:02.240]you are. And so these ideas, these racial ideas make it
- [00:39:07.960]into the courtrooms as common knowledge, but really we're looking at
- [00:39:12.320]the development of an American nation that is a white male heteronormative.
- [00:39:17.960]And that everybody is supposed, that is the ordinary American. And
- [00:39:22.240]so when I mentioned the laws in the 19th, 20th century
- [00:39:29.660]policing sexuality and stuff, it was under the rubric of vagrancy,
- [00:39:37.160]but really it was about like this, a moral police, right?
- [00:39:41.280]To police sexual transgressions, specifically targeting
- [00:39:44.700]Asian laborers and Mexican laborers and the
- [00:39:48.580]sphere of miscegenation, but really it's really about defining
- [00:39:53.000]what ordinary American means.
- [00:39:56.480]So I hope I answered that. I also saw something in the chat
- [00:40:03.760]that I thought was interesting.
- [00:40:07.620]Emira says that if you want to come to the U.S.
- [00:40:09.720]as a refugee, you have to be healthy. You have to
- [00:40:12.120]go through a whole slew of health exams. And this also
- [00:40:16.380]is a really interesting way in which to police the American nation.
- [00:40:19.880]So we're, you know, in terms of being afraid
- [00:40:22.680]of miscegenation, the degradation of the nuclear family, right?
- [00:40:29.420]We're also fearful of being a healthy populace and
- [00:40:35.020]the assumption that somehow those coming in are not, right?
- [00:40:41.660]That they're taking over and making us unhealthy. And that
- [00:40:46.920]continues today in policy.
- [00:40:49.700]I also would love to chime in and just plug Nayan Shah's
- [00:40:53.900]"Contagious Divides" in talking about that. I know Dr. Jones is giving me
- [00:40:58.340]a thumbs up there, but it's actually thinking about
- [00:41:00.620]how Asian migration from the Pacific through San Francisco actually
- [00:41:05.060]creates the U.S. modern medical state, right?
- [00:41:08.180]Because it's this idea that we have to create a regulated system
- [00:41:13.120]of evaluation of health for immigrants. And so it's about this kind of
- [00:41:18.580]weird period where they were trying to figure out how to do so
- [00:41:21.540]because there is a fear that Chinese migrant laborers
- [00:41:24.920]were bringing in disease.
- [00:41:27.160]And gosh, there's so much to do with that. And
- [00:41:29.360]definitely eugenics too, Anne. Emira, go ahead, jump in, please.
- [00:41:36.940]I wasn't sure if I was able to, like, speak a question
- [00:41:40.160]or if I had to type it. So I apologize. I was
- [00:41:43.700]recently, something you were talking about,
- [00:41:45.860]Dr. Peche, you said something about how they didn't want, you know,
- [00:41:51.900]any homosexuals or any of that stuff.
- [00:41:53.680]And I was thinking about how a lot of these health screening
- [00:41:57.180]exams also require refugees to have an HIV exam, for example. So
- [00:42:03.500]how much of that is also tied to, you know, what types
- [00:42:07.660]of refugees are coming in as well, what is their sexuality, right?
- [00:42:11.320]So there's like a slew of different things. But so there's
- [00:42:15.160]that part of it as well. But then the other thing I
- [00:42:17.200]was thinking about, I was doing one of my research project recently,
- [00:42:20.840]I was looking at refugee resettlement in Nebraska, specifically
- [00:42:24.540]starting in 1975.
- [00:42:27.720]And one of the things that we found was that
- [00:42:30.120]the first Vietnamese refugees that came to
- [00:42:32.000]Nebraska were actually Vietnamese doctors that they recruited
- [00:42:35.320]out of Camp Pendleton.
- [00:42:36.560]Oh my god.
- [00:42:39.240]Yeah. And, and it was all like, yes, information.
- [00:42:44.040]It was really interesting because, and it was because there was such
- [00:42:50.180]a desperate need in the state for rural, like the rural state of
- [00:42:54.320]Nebraska had no doctors, there was no healthcare professionals
- [00:42:57.360]and there was, and as you were saying there was,
- [00:42:59.420]you know, 130,000 refugees, they're mostly educated.
- [00:43:02.780]They speak English, they speak French. And so what
- [00:43:06.220]the state did, the unicameral gave them $50,000 to three
- [00:43:10.300]senators from the state of Nebraska to go to
- [00:43:12.520]Camp Pendleton and recruit 28 doctors to come to Nebraska.
- [00:43:17.360]They went to University of Nebraska Medical Center, got trained and got
- [00:43:21.640]spread across the state of Nebraska and most of them ended up staying.
- [00:43:26.060]And that kind of, so this was done in 1975 and it's just
- [00:43:29.580]really interesting because we find ourselves in kind of
- [00:43:32.460]the same situation today, Nebraska is still facing the
- [00:43:36.400]same kind of healthcare shortage.
- [00:43:38.720]Yet we're not doing the same kind of a thing, right? Like we're
- [00:43:41.120]not putting in the same kind of resources to fund, like I was talking
- [00:43:45.980]to a colleague of mine who works in refugee resettlement and she said, you
- [00:43:49.440]know, I have a doctor from Afghanistan who works in a meat packing factory.
- [00:43:53.860]We're not willing to put in the same kind of
- [00:43:56.460]resources to sort of just up-skill people when it comes, you
- [00:44:02.200]know, to just up-skill people, just to give them, mostly
- [00:44:06.360]it's just to give them English lessons, most of the time.
- [00:44:09.060]That's really all it is. And let them pass a couple
- [00:44:11.920]of exams. These people have decades of experience in the field.
- [00:44:15.380]But we're not willing to do that today, but we were willing to do it in 1975.
- [00:44:19.780]So it's just a really interesting contrast of where
- [00:44:21.980]we find ourselves and where we were in 1975.
- [00:44:25.080]Right. And it makes me think of sort of the building of why,
- [00:44:36.040]who is a worthy, right?
- [00:44:38.420]Yes, exactly.
- [00:44:39.540]You can contribute productively to the needs of this country
- [00:44:43.580]in some way, but you have to make that case.
- [00:44:47.700]Right.
- [00:44:47.840]And there are very specific ways in which that's
- [00:44:53.640]done, like you said, by recruiting
- [00:44:55.300]specifically medical doctors.
- [00:44:57.720]But also, generally, there's this interesting expectation of a particular
- [00:45:04.080]kind of immigrant narrative that will allow you to get asylum.
- [00:45:07.560]So there are, so the work on Latin American immigrants seeking
- [00:45:15.360]asylum and the ways in which they, and I'm thinking back to
- [00:45:21.600]Rigoberta Menchú and these others, so that had to really perfect the
- [00:45:27.900]particular expected victim narrative that American
- [00:45:32.420]audiences are willing to grant asylum.
- [00:45:37.520]Right. So perfecting what is expected of a particular passive victim.
- [00:45:46.120]Yeah. And it was just really interesting to sort
- [00:45:49.760]of find that historical context and then sort of complete and
- [00:45:54.760]other sort of opposition to it today.
- [00:45:58.980]Yeah. Thank you. It was a wonderful presentation. I
- [00:46:02.840]really appreciated that.
- [00:46:04.360]Thank you.
- [00:46:05.400]And I'm going to have to, I know there are questions in the chat. I'm
- [00:46:09.220]going to turn it over.
- [00:46:11.620]Dr. Jones, do you think we have time for one more question?
- [00:46:14.260]I would, can we do Serenity and Veronica? We can go a
- [00:46:17.900]little bit over. It's not, sometimes we go to 10:30, we're fine.
- [00:46:22.020]Okay.
- [00:46:22.340]As long as Linda doesn't have a... Dr. Ho Peche, do you have,
- [00:46:25.060]okay, let's go ahead. Let's let it cook because
- [00:46:27.700]students are dropping questions.
- [00:46:30.360]Okay. So Serenity, you had a question/comment. Do you have
- [00:46:34.040]a question that you want to go along with your comment, which says
- [00:46:36.800]this also plays into the bit of why a lot of Asian immigrants
- [00:46:39.500]give their children white or American names so that they fit in more.
- [00:46:43.620]Additionally, a lot of Asian immigrants encourage
- [00:46:45.380]their children not to speak native languages of
- [00:46:48.100]their parents as not to receive backlash. I
- [00:46:50.360]know that's absolutely the case for my family.
- [00:46:54.320]I was actually going to comment more on a personal experience as
- [00:46:57.540]well. So my grandma and my dad were both born in the Philippines
- [00:47:01.380]and my grandma got remarried to an American man.
- [00:47:05.280]And when she came over here, she changed my dad's name. And then
- [00:47:08.340]also he was not allowed to speak his native languages at all, sorry.
- [00:47:12.840]And he's Filipino. So I guess more so Filipinos don't receive the same
- [00:47:18.020]amount of backlash as other communities do, like Vietnamese
- [00:47:21.100]communities and Chinese communities.
- [00:47:22.620]But we do oftentimes get a lot of different types of racial
- [00:47:28.200]profiling, especially if you have a Hispanic last name
- [00:47:31.560]being Asian. So I just wanted to kind of add that. So thank you.
- [00:47:38.080]Yeah, thank you so much. It's absolutely true. And the case of
- [00:47:42.320]Filipino representation is interesting as well
- [00:47:44.920]because it has changed over time.
- [00:47:47.200]If you look at 19th century illustrations and
- [00:47:50.320]newspapers and representations of the uncivilized kind of barbaric
- [00:47:54.860]worker, when we needed them, they were very
- [00:47:58.380]positive representations in the fields in early 20th century.
- [00:48:03.840]And then when they are no longer needed, they're seen as lazy
- [00:48:07.800]compared to Mexican workers.
- [00:48:12.100]And so, you know, and then we have the nursing shortage and
- [00:48:15.620]the recruitment of a particular kind of industry
- [00:48:18.480]from the Philippines and it's interesting how perceptions
- [00:48:22.320]change over time as well.
- [00:48:24.840]And yeah, I'd like to add my father came as a refugee
- [00:48:29.040]from that first wave and met my mom, a Mexican immigrant in L.A.
- [00:48:35.460]And I was given the name Linda because of Linda Ronstadt
- [00:48:41.040]that my dad really liked. And so, yeah, we get into immigrant
- [00:48:46.300]sort of strategies for cultural belonging and naming.
- [00:48:54.220]Yeah, it's very interesting, especially, I mean, it kind of
- [00:48:57.180]speaks to the contentions that a lot of refugees, Vietnamese
- [00:49:01.240]refugees were feeling when they arrived right in the U.S.
- [00:49:04.040]and when they were thinking about establishing a life here.
- [00:49:06.580]And so I'm always thinking about that. We have a
- [00:49:09.480]question from Veronica that I'll read. So Veronica says, my parents
- [00:49:13.300]are refugees and something I noticed in our community is
- [00:49:16.100]that there's a sense of separation between certain
- [00:49:17.960]types of immigrants.
- [00:49:18.880]So do you think in the aspect of our modern society, is there
- [00:49:23.280]a sense of separation or hierarchy between immigrants who
- [00:49:26.580]came to America through refugee programs and immigrants who
- [00:49:29.500]came to America another way?
- [00:49:32.740]Absolutely. And I think that gets to the core of
- [00:49:35.900]really problematizing these concepts, both as legal definitions, as well
- [00:49:43.240]as popular conceptions of refugee and real life resentments at
- [00:49:49.980]why certain communities are given more assistance and more help.
- [00:49:58.440]And it creates these divisions, both even within the Vietnamese community.
- [00:50:04.060]So just remembering it's not a monolith that's
- [00:50:05.920]Vietnamese community, but like the different ways in
- [00:50:08.300]which you came here even creates divisions of how much assistance
- [00:50:14.440]you've been granted and why, right?
- [00:50:17.660]And it's, again, a question of worthiness.
- [00:50:25.500]Great, thank you. We have another question from Omar.
- [00:50:29.140]And it says, if I recall, if any other race that wasn't
- [00:50:33.400]white were to move into suburban areas, there was a plan to
- [00:50:36.300]move all the families into a new area and then leave the
- [00:50:39.360]old barren, old area barren of any support, thus making them ghettos.
- [00:50:44.040]This creates stereotypes, of course. And so is that
- [00:50:47.080]correct or is there a different engagement with that?
- [00:50:52.060]I do know that there was an attempt to, after the first sort of
- [00:51:02.320]waves, for lack of a better word, of Vietnamese
- [00:51:06.560]refugees, there was an attempt to disseminate refugees so they
- [00:51:11.360]didn't quote unquote take over.
- [00:51:13.080]So I'm not sure about the specific case of suburban communities, but I do
- [00:51:19.420]know that there was a very specific attempt to sort of
- [00:51:25.200]spread the communities out.
- [00:51:27.720]So you had folks that ended up in the Midwest and they were very
- [00:51:31.640]cold, so they came to the South anyway. You had folks
- [00:51:34.760]resettled in the Northeast.
- [00:51:37.860]So there are small pockets that still live there of
- [00:51:41.140]second generation communities, but also if you look at the current
- [00:51:44.960]demographics, mostly in California and mostly in Texas.
- [00:51:52.060]And those policies and programs were specific to a
- [00:51:58.840]response to sort of issues like the Texas fishermen here.
- [00:52:02.640]Yeah, I also think the concept of white flight is more
- [00:52:07.140]directed towards African American communities and
- [00:52:09.880]cities that have large Black populations.
- [00:52:12.880]And so that could be maybe what Omar is referencing in that sense.
- [00:52:16.860]Yeah, I do know in Houston, for example, the sort of our
- [00:52:22.160]Chinatown and Little Saigon Town is actually at the outskirts and that
- [00:52:27.660]had more to do with the affordability of housing.
- [00:52:36.740]Yeah. Alright, so I'm going to take the last question before
- [00:52:39.680]Emily wraps us up. And I'm going to make this a
- [00:52:42.360]little bit more hypothetical and students you are more than welcome
- [00:52:45.140]to chime in on your responses to this, maybe in the chat.
- [00:52:49.240]So what does the refugee crisis look like today? And are there
- [00:52:52.740]certain areas or regions of the world that are
- [00:52:54.680]experiencing this presently?
- [00:52:56.420]And then here's kind of where my hypothetical question
- [00:52:58.580]comes in and maybe it's not something we can answer in
- [00:53:01.060]the few minutes that we have left.
- [00:53:02.680]But can someone from a first world country like the United States would be a refugee?
- [00:53:11.460]I'm going to say yes.
- [00:53:16.920]Thanks, Omar. Why? And I think I know why, because we talked
- [00:53:20.380]about this. Go ahead.
- [00:53:21.920]Oh, my gosh, wait, we did. Oh, yeah, wait, let me let me recall. Let me recall.
- [00:53:25.660]OK, so in my mind, what I think the refugee could be is like
- [00:53:30.020]they're trying to get away from certain political problems or happenings
- [00:53:36.260]happening in the country.
- [00:53:37.020]So, like, let's say hypothetically, and I'm going to bring
- [00:53:40.440]in politics right now, like Project 2025 fucks us all over.
- [00:53:44.500]I would be a refugee if I were to go to another country to get
- [00:53:49.340]away from all that, because I am a gay Mexican-American from
- [00:53:52.520]a family of immigrants.
- [00:53:57.710]I think that's a very thank you so much for sharing, Omar.
- [00:54:01.590]Yes. I think it brings up a lot of issues in my mind.
- [00:54:10.530]In particular, where would you go, right?
- [00:54:16.110]So we would have to really think about how the definition
- [00:54:19.210]of refugee is going to be negotiated to allow, right, for you.
- [00:54:25.810]And the fact that I really like the question, Dr. Anderson,
- [00:54:31.570]of thinking about, OK, well, can first world peoples go elsewhere?
- [00:54:35.410]Because it was really it was the term refugee
- [00:54:39.270]from the core word refuge was really developed at a
- [00:54:45.090]time where we're thinking about cementing of geographical borders, but
- [00:54:49.210]this idea of the West having to be the savior.
- [00:54:52.130]Right. So it's like this more amorphous idea of where you're
- [00:54:58.310]going to provide refuge.
- [00:55:00.310]But during this time, we're talking about Omar, your
- [00:55:04.890]experiences that you brought up, also thinking about climate issues
- [00:55:10.110]and climate refugees that we're going to be facing very
- [00:55:13.470]soon now, if not within the next 25, 30 years.
- [00:55:17.590]And so our definitions are going to probably have to keep
- [00:55:22.870]up and keep developing in different ways in order for us
- [00:55:26.770]to keep that concept and keep the ability to think about
- [00:55:32.690]different kinds of human rights, justifications for the
- [00:55:38.370]movement of peoples.
- [00:55:41.210]But yeah, that's a great question.
- [00:55:44.070]And perhaps one that we will just let linger even
- [00:55:47.750]after this webinar, because I agree, I don't think there is
- [00:55:50.930]an easy answer to that question yet.
- [00:55:54.790]But thank you so much for joining me in conversation, Dr. Ho
- [00:55:58.090]Peche, and I will turn it over to Emily to wrap us up.
- [00:56:03.180]Yes, thank you so much, Dr. Ho Peche, for joining
- [00:56:06.020]us today. It's been an honor to have you here.
- [00:56:08.680]And we're so grateful for your time and appreciate the way
- [00:56:11.020]that your projects are laying the foundation for
- [00:56:13.400]the questions that we're asking at the U.S. Law and Race Initiative.
- [00:56:17.120]I'd also like to thank our audience for watching and sending in all of
- [00:56:20.080]these great questions and the U.S. Law and Race team for all of your support.
- [00:56:24.580]You can learn more about the U.S. Law and Race Initiative at
- [00:56:27.500]uslawandrace.unl.edu. Additional information about
- [00:56:33.280]our events series, as well as videos of our past events are
- [00:56:36.500]posted at events.unl.edu/uslawandrace.
- [00:56:40.380]Thank you, everybody.
The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!
You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.
Log in to post comments
Embed
Copy the following code into your page
HTML
<div style="padding-top: 56.25%; overflow: hidden; position:relative; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;"> <iframe style="bottom: 0; left: 0; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; border: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%;" src="https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/23689?format=iframe&autoplay=0" title="Video Player: Asian Americans Confront U.S. Law & Policy: A Case Study of the Vietnamese Impact on Defining the "Refugee"" allowfullscreen ></iframe> </div>
Comments
0 Comments