[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 57 (Wednesday, May 11, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: May 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
CITIZENSHIP FOR HMONG VETERANS OF THE VIETNAM WAR
______
HON. BRUCE F. VENTO
of minnesota
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, May 11, 1994
Mr. VENTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call attention to the
situation of Hmong veterans throughout the United States, who served
alongside U.S. military forces in the Vietnam war. I am submitting an
article which appeared in a newspaper in my district, the St. Paul
Pioneer Press, on May 1, 1994, which describes some of the experiences
of the Hmong veterans during the war and after when the Hmong people
remained the target of the Laotian Government. Many of these people
became refugees and were able to make their way to the United States in
search of safety.
After many years of life in the United States, most of those who
served have been unable to attain citizenship, largely because of the
English language requirement. It has only been in recent decades that
the Hmong language has had a written form. For those who fought in the
war, any opportunity for an education was lost.
Mr. Speaker, I have introduced a bill, H.R. 4048, the Hmong Veterans
Naturalization Act, which would waive the English language and
residency tests for U.S. citizenship for the Hmong who served and their
spouses. Enactment of this measure would be a sign of our recognition
of the loyalty of the Hmong, who fought bravely and experienced many
losses, as a result of their service on the side of the United States
during the Vietnam war. The following article makes a strong case for
this legislation.
Hmong Who Fought in Laos With the U.S. Cannot Hope To Become Citizens
The elderly warrior from Laos tells his story in animated
Hmong when he recalls a hand-to-hand fight with a Vietnamese
communist one jungle night in 1968. Playing the enemy, Cha
Ying Yang jabs the air with an imaginary bayonet and draws an
invisible gun. He survived because he flinched. A gunshot
meant for the back of his head shattered the right side of
his face instead.
``The Americans asked us to help, and we knew that maybe we
had a chance to win. So we helped them with all our hearts,''
Cha Ying Yang said. He removes two lower dentures, crafted to
fit his reconstructed jaw, to show what he lost while serving
in the Central Intelligence Agency's ``secret army'' in Laos.
``It's painful talking about these things. If you think
about it, you will lose your sight, because you cry. I will
always remember it. The scenes where I was fighting or
struggling go by me, back and forth in my mind, still.''
Yee Vang, 46, lost an eye and an arm. A mortar struck near
a group of Hmong guarding a bunker in Northern Laos in 1971.
``It exploded very close to me. It cut my arm and cut other
parts of my body. My fingers, my eyes,'' said Yee Vang, who
was recruited by the CIA at age 10. His right eye was
destroyed by mortar fragments, and his forearm was mangled
beyond repair.
``The American people have to understand about the secret
war in Laos and they should understand about our people,''
said Cherzong Vang, president of the Lao Veterans of America
Inc. in St. Paul. ``The American jets fall in the high
mountains, and these (Hmong) guys hurry to save American
soldiers. They don't worry about if they die, they don't
worry about who's going to shoot them. Don't they deserve to
be American citizens?''
The Hmong veterans resettled in the Twin Cities want to be
U.S. citizens, with all of the dignity that comes with having
a country to call their own. They feel that because of their
service in Laos for the CIA, they are already American at
heart. But many Hmong veterans cannot speak English and so
are unable to pass the U.S. citizenship test.
Hmong veterans are aware that many Americans do not welcome
refugees who do not speak English. They know that many are
unaware of how the Hmong took orders from Americans, cooked
food for them, guarded them, carried them when they were
wounded, wrapped their bodies when they were killed.
When their American friends left in 1974, Hmong hopes for a
free Laos were dashed. Tou Yang, 41 constantly relives the
years after the American pullout, when he and the other Hmong
resisters were trapped in the mountains, valleys, and jungles
that teemed with hostile troops. Though his body is here in
Minnesota, Tou Yang's spirit walks in post-1974 Laos.
``The Americans left and we felt abandoned and there was no
escape. We couldn't get to Thailand; we couldn't get to
freedom; our leaders left us. Now that we are in America, we
still feel like we've been abandoned,'' he said.
``I always still dream that I am there and coming to
America. I've never actually dreamed that I made it here.''
minds consumed by war
The Hmong veterans are proud men, but they also feel
frustrated, hurt and rejected. They ask Americans to think
about these things:
How can a middle-age or elderly man come to a new country
and become educated when he was never schooled in his home
country in anything except farming and making war? How can a
man concentrate on learning English when his mind drifts
constantly to the brutality and deafening din of war, or when
a passing city utilities truck, for a startling second,
sounds like a tank?
How can a man concentrate when he is remembering villages
full of women, men, and children--some of them his
relatives--cut into pieces by bayonets? Can a man put his
mind to learning when he sometimes jumps at imaginary
enemies, forgetting that this is America and the only war is
within himself?
These questions are like a series of circles forever
spiraling back onto themselves. The quest for citizenship is
but one more battle for the Hmong.
waiving the english rule
While serving in special guerrilla units during the Vietnam
War, between 10,000 and 20,000 Hmong men, women and children
were killed, and more than 100,000 fled to Thai refugee
camps. There are 27,000 Hmong in Minnesota, and an estimated
5,000 to 7,000 of them fought in the CIA's special forces.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Vento, D-Minn., has introduced legislation
that would waive the English language requirement and grant
citizenship for Hmong veterans who served with the special
guerrilla units in Laos between 1961 and 1978, but Vento's
bill faces a tough battle in Washington.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service objects to an
English-language waiver for unimpaired people under age 50.
Agency spokesman Rudy Murillo said that when the INS first
saw Vento's bill, ``We figured it was reasonable to assume
that many of these people living in this country now who are
under 50 years of age have acclimated to our society.''
At least one Republican congressman plans to oppose the
measure. Rep. Toby Roth of Wisconsin, another state with a
sizable Hmong population, last year introduced a bill to
declare English the official language of the land. The
measure would repeal all federal bilingual programs and
direct the INS to establish an English proficiency standard
for immigrants to gain citizenship.
Through a spokesman, Roth said, ``It is important that all
groups of immigrants be required to learn English so they
have the best possible opportunity to succeed in our
society.''
Vento sees the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act as a way
to plug a legal loophole. ``If somebody has served in the
U.S. armed services and they can demonstrate that, even if
they are a foreign national, they get citizenship
authomatically. But these people didn't serve in the armed
services of the United States, they were recruited in the
CIA,'' Vento said.
Filipino ``scouts'' who fought for the United States in
World War II had to wait until the 1980s to get
naturalization rights; veteran's benefits came later. Vento's
bill does not extend veteran's benefits to the Hmong.
``We made the decision to accord them (the Hmong) asylum
here because of the persecution and threat of death for
having helped us in Southeast Asia, and now we're denying
them the dignity of full citizenship,'' Vento said.
``When they should have been in school, they were fighting
with our troops, saving American lives,'' Vento said. ``The
effort to learn English, when you have never had formal
schooling, is really difficult--and that is an absolute bar
to citizenship in the United States,'' Vento said.
Vietnam veteran Bob Anderson is deeply involved with the
local Hmong population and often travels to Laos. Anderson,
who founded the Hmong-American Partnership, supports the
English-language waiver bill as well as extending veteran's
benefits to the Hmong.
``The Hmong who fought in (General) Vang Pao's army
understood they were fighting for the Americans and that they
were in some sense an American army. They often mention the
promise that was made. It's not clear who made it and when,
but some promise was made that if the war went badly, the
Hmong would be taken care of,'' Anderson said.
``The Hmong were used.''
a life walking, running
Tou Yang, the St. Paul man who dreams he is still trying to
get to the United States, knew by the time he was 12 that he
would go to war. Indeed, his parents had joined the French in
the 1950s to fight communists. The youngest of eight
children, Tou Yang's life was never peaceful in Muong Mot, a
village in Northern Laos near the Vietnamese border.
Tou Yang's father was the village leader, and the boy
helped raise the family's cattle. ``I was still very young
and so I would go to school, I would come back, and I would
still take milk from my mother,'' he said. There were brief
lulls before the CIA came to recruit Hmong fighters.
``I was so young that one of my first duties in the village
was just to cook. There was an American named Dick, and he
was stationed with us. And I would cook porridge and stuff
for him and the other soldiers,'' Tou Yang said.
Because there was always war, his family moved constantly.
Many Hmong people were taken to communist ``re-education''
camps, never to return. Tou Yang's father died in one of the
brutal camps.
Stranded in hostile mountains after the Americans left Laos
in 1974, Tou Yang fled to the jungle valleys with a
resistance group for three years.
``Even though my body is here, my spirit is always living
in those years when the Americans left. We still dream about
walking. There was no telephone, no way to communicate. If
you want to send a message to another group of resisters, you
walk,'' he said. Sometimes, they walked for days.
``During the war, my feet rot from not changing my shoes
because we have to be fighting all the time. And I don't ever
change my clothes, there is no other pair of clothes I wear.
Sometimes my shoes would rot, and there would be maggots in
my shoes from just being in the jungle so long. When I take
off my shoes, there were maggots eating up my feet.''
One of the veterans has brought a copy of the book,
``Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans, and the Secret
Wars for Laos.'' Tou Yang locates a drawing and explains that
it is one of three he made while in Thailand. His drawing
depicts a scene of unspeakable brutality. Uniformed soldiers
are shown slaughtering the residents of a Hmong village.
Written next to nine of the stabbed and decapitated bodies
are names. Tou Yang points to each. There lay his aunt. His
uncle. His nieces and nephews.
the jungle resistance
Lor Cha Yang, 42, was also among the resisters during the
lonely years after 1974. He remembers his group eating roots,
berries and small animals to survive, and killing enemy
soldiers when they had to. They became one with the jungle.
``We were very skinny and our hair grew long,'' he recalls.
Lor Cha Yang started fighting communists for the CIA at 14.
All the boys of that age knew how to fire guns and how to
farm. There was no flat space around his village, Muong Mot,
so the Hmong farms extended out into the jungle and along
flowing rivers. Lor Cha Yang was the oldest of six children.
He and Tou Yang are brothers.
``Between 1969 and 1975, I was involved in many wars, but I
was lucky and was not injured. My father was a soldier, and
he was one of the leaders. So I didn't go out into the field
very much. I was back in the office, helping with the rice
droppings--the air drops.''
Life changed dramatically after he and the other Hmong
became trapped in the mountains, After 1975, it was dangerous
for a group to travel together, Lor Cha Yang said communists
would stop groups of men and separate them.
``There were a lot of instances where they'd take these men
who were walking or gathering in groups, and they would take
them away, and you would never see them again,'' Lor Cha Yang
said. The Hmong men took to the jungle.
``The women, they'd punish them a little bit more lightly
when they catch them They came and they asked the women a lot
of questions about their men, and how they planned their war.
They would ask the women how the Hmong men planned their war
with the Americans, and what the Americans taught them.''
The communists tormented the women with declarations that
Hmong children who were born before 1975 were considered
American children with American blood, Lor Cha Yang said.
Therefore, Among children were enemies and could be killed in
the same way American soldiers were killed.
So the resisters stayed in motion, never camping in the
same spot for more than two days at a time. Even lighting
cooking fires was dangerous. After three years of trying to
flush the Hmong resisters from their hiding places, the
communists stepped up the violence.
``They searched for us all over valleys and mountains. And
when they can't find us, they call in their planes, and the
planes would wipe out part of the jungle, clear things so
they would see us,'' Lor Cha Yang said.
From February to October in 1978, the bombing and the
effects of chemical weapons were too much for the Hmong to
withstand, and Lor Cha Yang's group raced to the Mekong River
and freedom. There was a great battle at the river, however,
and only half of the group made it to freedom.
After two years in Thai refugee camps, including the
populous Ban Sinai border camp, Lor Cha Yang came to America.
He and his family--his wife, five children and his mother--
live on $800 a month in public assistance. Lor Cha Yang knows
a few English words, not enough to pass the citizenship test.
``Here, people don't experience someone coming into their
country, to their village, and kick them out or kill them and
oppress them. They have never experienced that here, so no
matter how much we tell them, they probably would not
understand.''
shrapnel souvenirs
Vang Ger Yang, 41, spent much of his youth guarding Route
6, a strategic road connecting Hanoi, North Vietnam to the
Laotian capital of Vientiane for to the south. ``I've never
farmed, never had time to farm. I was occupied with being a
soldier,'' said Vang Ger Yang.
He remembers the afternoon a mortar hit in 1970. After the
blast, he ran and ran, until he felt dizzy and feverish. When
he regained consciousness, blood was on his legs and arms.
Ants were crawling all over him. Doctors could not retrieve
some pieces of shrapnel.
``After 1975, the communists came and told us, `You guys
are the hands and feet of the Americans, you guys work for
the Americans, so we're going to train you.' They took a
couple of my cousins to go to their camps and `train,' but
they never came back,'' Vang Ger Yang said.
``The communists came because they knew our leaders had
left us. We felt like we were going to die. This was the end.
There was no way out.''
The Vietnamese threatened the men's wives and eventually
took them to a prison camp. Vang Ger Yang, Lor Cha Yang and
Tou Yang did not see their wives for three years. Meanwhile,
the men had found safety at the Thai border camps.
``We didn't have any idea that our wives were still alive
or knew we were alive. One day they just appeared in the camp
where we were. It was like seeing somebody who you knew who
died and came out of the grave,'' Vang Ger Yang said. One of
his children had died of hunger in the prison camp. Tou Yang
lost two children there.
In 1989, Vang Ger Yang and his family came to the United
States. The household lives on his Social Security income and
his wife's public assistance. The $1,400 a month supports 10
people. Though it is common for non-English-speaking people
to take jobs as laborers, doctors have told Vang Ger Yang not
to do heavy labor because of his injuries.
Vang Ger Yang falls silent. He absently examines his arms,
but there is nothing to see. But embedded deep in his body
are irretrievable pieces of shrapnel, and Vang Ger Yang knows
the exact location of each.
lost promises of plenty
``We were peaceful. They came and took our land,'' said Cha
Ying Yang, the old warrior. ``After I fought with the French
in 1953 in Dien Bien Phu, I became a farmer for about three
or four years and then got involved with the Americans.''
In the mid-1960s, the Americans assigned Cha Ying Yang and
other Hmong to set up a station near Buong Long in Northern
Laos and to defend Route 6.
``The Americans told us that we need to defend that road
for them. And if we did that, they would set up schools, and
they'll set hospitals, they'll build us roads, and they'll
help us farm in that area,'' he said.
``I was confident about what the Americans were saying--
that if we lost the war, they'll help us and they would bring
us here,'' he said. ``I don't think it was worth it. If we
were in Laos and if there were no war, I would have cows, I
could have a farm, I would have everything I need. But here I
have to pay rent, I have to pay all kinds of bills, and after
I pay all these, I don't have anything left.''
Cha Ying Yang has been in America since 1980 and his
children--five sons, six daughters--are grown now
The 1968 ambush that cost him his lower face is still clear
in his mind. About 40 American and Hmong lives were lost, but
the communist soldiers were killed by the hundreds, Cha Ying
Yang notes with pride.
``We had assistance from an American airplane. That's why
we won that battle. They had these revolving guns from the
airplane, which was very effective. `Spooky,' it was called.
It sprayed bombs all over the camp so that no more communists
could enter into it.''
The word ``Spooky'' sounds absurd against the lyrical,
tonal sounds of the Hmong language, and the veterans laugh.
``I could take you to Laos to show where we fought and the
holes we dug up. The trenches are still there. Some of the
bombshells are still there,'' Cha Ying Yang said. ``If we
were there, we would never be sitting here together talking
like this. Everybody would have a gun in their lap.''
To this day, Cha Ying Yang marvels at the ability of
communist Vietnamese to blend into the jungle and thrive on
next to nothing.
``The communist Vietnamese were very smart, and they hide
their tracks really well. They don't leave any tracks, they
will step in each other's tracks. It would never look like
anybody went through,'' Cha Ying Yang said.
``There were a couple of instances where we shot a couple
of Vietnamese and all we found on the bodies were a couple of
pieces of bread about this big,'' he said, indicating a fist-
sized lump.
``They could hide themselves really well. They could be on
your doorstep, under your porch, or they could stand in one
place for a whole day, and you wouldn't even know they were
there to look at you and to find out things about you. You
always knew that there was somebody around.''
Cha Ying Yang still jumps at noises that sound like bombs.
And sometimes he forgets that no ghosts are in the trees.
a child guardian
Yee Vang, the man who lost his eye and forearm, was one of
the CIA's littlest warriors. He was 10 when the CIA came
recruiting. There would be no school and no lazy days with
only roosters and rice to think about. Instead, he would
learn from Thai and American officers how to use grenades and
guns.
There was never any question that the Hmong would fight the
communists who were invading his village of Buong Long, in
central Laos. They would join the Americans, They would help
whenever American soldiers went down.
``At first I was afraid, but I saw many American planes,
and there was a lot of activity, so the fear went away,''
said Yee Vang, 46. ``Since the Americans were helping us, we
thought we'd win.''
The Hmong built good underground bunkers, Yee Vang said
with pride. They dug canals around them and used the
Americans' barbed wire to surround it. Inside the bunker,
radio antennae pointed toward the ceiling.
``The Americans came and lived with us in this hole,'' Yee
Vang said. ``When Americans were inside, our job was to guard
the bunker. We had to be on guard with our guns all the time,
walking around. And as long as the Americans were safe
inside, we were to be walking outside. Those soldiers I
guarded the bunker with were very close friends.''
More than anything, Yee Vang said, he would like to be
recognized as an American citizen and an honored war veteran.
But he knows that a deep valley of misunderstanding separates
the Hmong and the American people.
Yee Vang said that despite the difficulties Hmong people
face in America, he knows few people who want to return to
Leos and risk persecution.
``The American public, they have told us many times, ``Why
are you here? We have enough people, we have enough problems.
We don't need any more.' So the general public doesn't
understand at all,'' he said.
Yes, I'm very hurt. But because of my English ability, I
cannot tell them.''
____________________