The New York Times has a great article up right now comparing the surprise upset victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the primary victory of Elizabeth Holtzman in 1972. It’s of personal interest to me because I once appeared on a panel with Ms. Holtzman at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to discuss the possible impeachment of George W. Bush. I don’t know why I was invited but she was there because she served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted out articles of impeachment against President Nixon.
Reading the article, I was pleased to learn a little more about her career in Congress.
Ms. Holtzman’s time in Congress, which was followed by a long tenure as Brooklyn district attorney and then a short one as New York City’s comptroller, was distinguished by her role in helping found what would become the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, by the lawsuit she brought against President Richard M. Nixon’s administration for the bombing of Cambodia and by her membership in the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Nixon. With Senator Edward M. Kennedy, she wrote the Refugee Act of 1980, in response to the exodus of Vietnamese after the war, which raised the annual ceiling for refugees coming into the country, significantly, to 50,000 and created a formal process for reviewing and adjusting the numbers to accommodate emergencies.
When I was in elementary school, these refugees were initially referred to as “The Boat People,” which struck me as odd then and still seems strange and dehumanizing today. I did not know about the Refugee Act of 1980 although I guess I knew that there must have been some legislative effort to accommodate the influx of Vietnamese people after Saigon fell to the North. She and Senator Kennedy must have done an adequate job because their bill breezed through Congress.
The bill passed unanimously in the Senate late in 1979. “No one said Vietnam is sending their rapists and killers and not their best,” Ms. Holtzman elaborated. “The fact that we are in hysteria over admitting 2,000 children to this country is something I cannot fathom. It is totally astonishing.”
It does seem strange in retrospect that having just lost over 50,000 soldiers in a war with North Vietnam, and after killing countless Vietnamese people, we didn’t have a bunch of conservatives freaking out that there might be sleeper cells among the refugees who would come here to get revenge. But, then Fox News and hate radio didn’t exist back then, so it was harder for the Louie Gohmert’s of the world to become president.
I remember clearly back in the seventies when many Vietnamese refugees came into our city. My mother’s church sponsored several large families who came over, and this was in Ohio. Several blocks away from my parent’s house was one that became a refugee home. My mom said it was terrible that there were so many of “those people” crowded into that small brick ranch, but I reminded her that my sister’s best friend came from a Catholic family and there were eleven children in their small brick ranch. She never mentioned it again.
But the response overall was never like the haters now. The refugees in our area settled in and made their lives here. Several Vietnamese were in my school and I don’t recall any animosity toward them.
It’s a grim day when we turn people away and force desperate souls to surrender their children. It’s despicable. We have to turn this around.
We had the same experience here in Michigan. The local churches sponsored families, paid their rent, gave them furniture, food and whatever else they needed.
My kids went to school with a Vietnamese boy in each of their class. They were sweet natured boys and the kids all loved them.
We only had one bad incident when two older boys, gang members I think, tried to pass as teenagers and tried to bully some kids. A fight broke out and the teachers had to break it up. They were expelled and no trouble after that.
Those same churches would be Trump supporters at this point. Things change.
I remember that time as well. There was a large group that came in through Long Beach and then Orange County, CA. A fair amount were families who had children with US servicemen, but there was an interesting mixture of guilt about the war still brandishing its emotions that came from the Jane Fonda branch as well as the friendships made with those that served in Vietnam. Unlike today, people seemed to want to reach out and there just wasn’t any chatter creating fear like there is today.
I remember the San Pedro fishing fleet not being happy at all when the Vietnamese started buying boats.
There is still a large population in Long Beach/San Pedro.
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Very true. I seem to remember there was a big group that went to Florida and Louisiana that also took up fishing.
It’s really a great example of what immigrants face.
If I recall correctly, the complaints were because;
Every country has seen the same issues. Shoot, 15 years later the same Vietnamese probably complained about the Cambodians `stealing’ their fishing areas!
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Anticommunism. The word you’re searching for here is “anticommunism.”
This brings to mind a story which I haven’t thought about in a very long time. It involves the first time I ever met a refugee, and had an opportunity to listen to their story. In 1981, I was fresh out of college and was early in the second year of my first “real job”, working as an electrical engineering tech for a local manufacturer. Every summer, they would shut down their manufacturing facilities to do a 100% inventory on every single electronic component they had. And there were a lot of them. They went on staggered shifts to keep some production running, but since I was the new guy, I was tasked with leading one team of “counters” for inventory. They often hired temps to assist with this very tedious job. And one of the temps who was hired was a Mr. Booran (sp???) Dong. Mr. Dong was one of the “boat people” from Vietnam. I would guess Mr. Dong to have been in his 50’s at that time, but I really don’t know for certain. He had been in the U.S. for about a year, after living in a refugee camp in Malaysia for almost a year after escaping Vietnam with his mother, wife, daughter, son in law, and his daughter’s three children. He left behind two sons in Vietnam, with whom there had been no contact since they had fled. His sons had been in the South Vietnamese Army.
Mr. Dong was a very quiet and humble man, with a quick smile, who never seemed to tire of the tedium of our work. His English was quite broken, but he had tried very hard to learn as much as he could in the time he had been here. His whole family lived together in a small, first floor apartment just a couple of miles from where we were working. He would either walk or ride his bike to work every day, and was always there well before our 7:00 A.M. starting time. Every day, at lunch time, his wife would make the 2 mile trek from their apartment, carrying a basket that held lunch for her and Mr. Dong. They would sit outside at the picnic tables with the rest of us, quietly eating their lunch. After a time, Mr. Dong began to tell us a little about their journey to the U.S. He had been a teacher in South Vietnam. His sons had fought alongside the Americans. He was so proud of his sons. He would show us pictures of them, what looked like a military I.D. photo, uniformed, and with the stern faces of a soldier who is going to war. The pride in his face told you everything you needed to know. His eyes would sometimes become glassy with tears when he talked of his sons and how he hoped to see them again one day. But he would always eventually break into a big smile, and talk about lucky he and his family had been to find their way to this great country.
Our short time with Mr. Dong came to an end too quickly, and we parted ways. Over the next couple of years I would often see him pedaling around the area of his apartment, or walking the sidewalk, as I was going to and from work. Most mornings I would see his bike, with its little basket hanging on the front of the handlebars, leaning against the front of his apartment building. And some time after that, I never saw him again.
I have changed jobs a couple of times since then, and though I rarely get back to that area, every time I drive by that apartment building, I think of Mr. Dong, and how amazed and blessed he felt to have that little corner apartment in a great country like America. And I wonder if he ever found his sons. And if life for he and his family turned out well. I certainly hope so. Every time I see and hear refugees demonized and vilified, I remember Mr. Dong, the man with the gentle smile and the grateful heart for the goodness and grace extended to him by his adopted country. My, how far we seem to have fallen into a moral abyss. It makes so sad and angry.
Mike, I’m typing this through tears. Thank you for honoring Mr. Dong in your thoughts and memories. Thank you for honoring all of us by sharing the story. I wish I could buy you a cold one and give you a big bear hug.
One thing that I have begun to realize as I get older is that who we become in this life is the product of a whole lot of little things that we experience along the journey. I can’t say why those few short weeks, 37 years ago, that I spent with a middle aged, bespectacled man with poor English language skills left such an imprint on my memory, but it has. I think it was just the sheer gratitude, grace, and humility that he displayed, in spite of the horrific journey he and his family had, and were, enduring. He was a joyous man, and he had so many reasons to not be, if he chose to take that perspective. But he was grateful for everything that life had given him. He had lost all his material possessions, his livelihood, and probably his sons. Yet, he made the choice to start life over, finding joy in the things that he did have, and with an unbridled optimism that he had found a new land that welcomed him and encouraged him to start his life anew, with hope. We never know what sort of impact we are going to have on other people’s lives. I doubt that Mr. Dong considered that, almost four decades later, someone he met for only a few short weeks would still be talking about the impact he had on them. You just never know. That is why I think it is so important to always, always, lean into the better angels of our nature.
I don’t recall any anti-refugee sentiment growing up, or even with the Vietnamese. Before Vietnam (long before) we had Hungarians who were refugees, and their kids went to school with us. Language was a problem, but I don’t remember anyone going out of their way to pick on them. Well, a couple did, but only once. Those kids grew up fighting Russians.
is the greatest danger to US democracy.
One of my friends feel that the Citizens United has been the greatest peril. While it has indeed contributed to the purchase of Congress and state legislatures, I feel that FN has taken advantage of our system to normalize the lowest common denominator.
Unlike other parliamentary democracies, our President, VP, and cabinet never have to go to Congress to answer questions! So they can choose FN to do all the damage, and never be held accountable.
And we are locked into such a primitive form of governance where rational ideas – why should supreme court justices not have term limits? – are impossible to enact!
It’s like being chained to the deck of Titanic and seeing it sink slowly!
a lot of Vietnamese came to the bay area, especially San Jose, lots went into the tech industry — the older generation as technicians, the younger went to college here and are/were engineers or in all the professions, including one of my doctors and several of my favorite co-workers. Outstanding people.