[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.''

                          ____________________