Pride and Fear

America is a nation of immigrants. Saint Paul has been an immigrants city more than most, at least in the Midwest.

And no immigrants stories affect me more than those of the thousands of H'mong who settled in the Twin Cities. The H'mong - the older of them, anyway - served on the payroll of the CIA against the Viet Cong. The weapons they were issued were the first tools they'd seen that didn't have their roots in the Stone Age.

After the war, the Vietnamese embarked on a campaign of brutal retribution - and many H'mong fled the country. The US government accepted them as refugees by the thousands. Many settled in California, but Saint Paul drew the second-greatest concentration of the new immigrants.

They've made an impact on the Twin Cities; Saint Paul schools are crowded with H'mong kids. And while many H'mong are thriving, some have had a hard time jumping from a life that was unchanged over perhaps the past thousand years to life in the frenzied first world.

If there's a group of people the US owes something to, it's the H'mong.

And so stories like this always get to me:

On Saturday afternoon, relief and pride spread over the Lee family. After the long year's absence, Cpl. Moua Lee arrived home.

More than 50 relatives were waiting for him at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport holding a "Welcome Home, Moua!" banner, American flags and Marine flags.

When Moua walked into the group's embrace, the relatives grew silent, many holding back tears.

"Thank God you made it home," Chue whispered, sobbing and holding her son tight. Moua hugged his father and then his wife. And for the first time, he held and kissed his baby son, Timmathy.

An uncle shook his hand and said, "Thank you." A stranger waiting on a bench saw his uniform and simply applauded.

The story is an amazing one.

Remeber - the H'mong went through hell before they came here. After the US bugged out of Vietnam, the Vietnamese government went after the H'mong; there are allegations that the Vietnamese dropped mustard gas on H'mong villages.

The older H'mong, whose memories of war are only 25-30 years in the past, can be forgiven for hoping their children never have to go there.

And yet the children of immigrants do:

Watching their children go off to fight probably produces different reactions in parents who have experienced war than it does in other parents, said Frederic Medway, a professor of psychology at the University of South Carolina.

Some get more anxious, realizing how precious life is once they've seen death, said Medway, who specializes in family separation. Others might feel more secure in some ways, knowing firsthand what their son or daughter might be going through, he said.

And some refugees are proud when their children join the military. If they led troops in their homeland, they might see military service as honorable for their children, said John Borden, associate director of the International Institute of Minnesota, a resettlement agency...Immigrants also join for more typical reasons, such as money for college, work experience and travel.

Many immigrant parents convey to their children a sense of gratitude toward the United States, said Ben Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center for the American Immigration Law Foundation in Washington, D.C. "It's not surprising to me that many of their children would have a sense of patriotism and duty that would cause them to look toward the military," he said.

"In my case, it's to repay," said Ahmed Shukri, an Ethiopian refugee who came to the United States via Somalia 26 years ago. He said he joined the Army after earning a GED, a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. "I was brought here by strangers. ... These people gave me food, they gave me housing. The question was 'Why are they so nice to me?' I want to be gracious enough to give something back."

The piece, by the Strib's Pam Louwagie, is an excellent one, and a must-read.

Posted by Mitch at May 15, 2005 09:47 AM | TrackBack