c-span, created by america's cable television companies and brought to you as a public service by your cable or satellite provider. on lectures in history, duke university professor gunther peck teaches a class on america's immigration policy towards refugees during the cold war. he describes how people fleeing communist countries such as cuba were given easier access to the u.s. city also talks about how race played a role in creating quotas, such as limiting immigrants from asian countries. his class is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> so welcome to class, folks. we have some visitors. welcome to duke university. my name is gunther peck. i teach immigration in the

department of history. this is a cross listed course called "immigrant dreams, american realities." and we are wrestling with the wonderful complexity of visions of america that immigrants bring to our national story. so you're welcome to participate in discussions if we get there. just raise your hand and i'll pull you in. i know you've done the readings. so no worries. okay. okay. so today's lecture is called "linking nation and humanity, u.s. refugee policy, 1945 to 1990." and we're going to focus in on this important subset of immigration law, immigration policy history today that we have touched on but we haven't really focused yet squarely in the class.

so i want you to fit it into where we were at the end of last class, which was the lecture on the passage of immigration reform in 1965 and that key idea is that the cold war was shaping domestic policy history and very clearly apparent in the ways in which the immigration reform act was passed. as a kind you have part of a broader campaign in fighting a cold war. that is especially true with u.s. refugee policy which is a perfect intersection of u.s. foreign policy and immigration policy. so before we begin though, what we have here are a couple of images of the present. i want to just have a brief discussion before we dive into the past about u.s. refugees and their significance to the contemporary moment we live in. and they are frequently invoked, and maybe we could just describe, i'm curious as to how you would describe why refugees matter today.

and what we have here, this is an image of the refugees that are being led into detention of under age minors who were picked up at the u.s. mexican border last summer when the refugee was burning quite vividly in the nation's newspapers. here is another image of refugees under age unaccompanied minors also heading north. this is on not public transportation but on a especially chartered train that most of the people here had paid traffickers to get across the border. and that is what we're looking at. i'm just curious if we could summarize or give a few ideas why refugees matter in the contemporary. it's a simple question. but actually it does have a lot at stake. so why do politicians talk about refugees right now? what are the stakes of refugees today? kate. >> "americans at the gate," we

kind of talked about how the refugees and the issue of whether to allow them in or not kind of changed the human rights question in the '70s. i think it's remained that since then probably. so it's really a question of how the u.s. embodies our democracy by thinking and enacting into policy the belief that all people deserve to be free from -- >> great comment. so that there's a humanitarian set of stakes that the refugee is someone who deserves by

virtue of their suffering acceptance into the nation. you alluded to the stakes though. so why should the united states care about those particular refugees? that's obviously one set of stakes. that's not the only way refugees are being discussed today. so what else -- what are some other ways? we're going to come to this question. why do they matter for the nation? yeah, haley. >> a selfish reason. but the image of the nation as a whole. [ inaudible ] and that matters. >> yeah, by comparison to germany right now, the united states quite unkind, uncharitable. germany has taken in 1.1 million syrian refugees last year alone. we're debating whether to take zero or 10,000. there's the debate.

emma. [ inaudible ] >> yes. >> right. >> so it's become a security issue. refugees equal an anxiety about national security clearly. mara. >> also refugee law and policy sits at the intersection between domestic policy and foreign policy. so you're saying something both to the american people about what it means to be american that we are accepting of people in difficult situations around the world and you're also saying something at the international stage about what america is willing to do in order to help the people around the world and which causes they're willing to and which issues they view as issues that would constitute refugee status. >> right. nicely put. you summarized the complex domestic and international stakes in individual refugees. right, exactly. elizabeth.

>> again, i don't necessary agree with this point but i think in political rhetoric now, refugees are kind of seen as dependents that will be coming into this country as dependents. it also becomes an economic issue that is being mentioned on both sides of the spectrum worrying about if we take x amount of refugees how will that impact our economy and what will we have to do as u.s. citizens to support them. >> right. good. anxiety about their public dependence or a security threat. >> to kind of build on mara's point about international relations, in the future, you can go back and say, well, we accepted so many refugees from this region and use it as almost political capital for future negotiations. >> great term. political capital. yeah. so yeah diane. >> this isn't an opinion that i personally hold. but i've always seen the u.s.'

role in accepting refugees as a form of justice for what happened in the middle east specifically. so a lot of iraqis being displaced because of the war, you know, who should be most responsible for accepting the refugees. it should be the countries that were directly involved in that war and that caused that war. and iraq obviously now does not take back their own citizens because it's almost a failed state. >> so this is an argument. i love how your comments are actually arguments. and that's great because you're highlighting the stakes of why refugees matter. and one of the arguments you're making is that refugees matter because we have humanitarian obligations to the nations that we have been part of u.s. foreign policy. so iraqis clearly if they're suffering after the u.s. invasion, the belief is has as buildings to help them out.

so there's no consensus what the stakes are with refugees. i think you've covered most of the key sense of stakes. i would frame it, there's a kind of set of stakes that are the debate works today, there's a convergence on the left and the right here which is that on the one hand, the national stakes in refugees might be humanitarian, but that we have interests in human rights that really transcend the stakes. the refugees' interests, we in effect owe them that if it's an iraqi refugee, lets say. and then those who are critical of refugee policy view them as being threats to the nation either economically or political threats that they are somehow literal security threats as terrorists or potential terrorists or as people who threaten our standard of living,

way of life, what have. the argument has been polarized between humanitarian interests on the one side and national security interests on the other. that is the contemporary framing of the refugee issue and why they matter. so what i think is interesting about that story is that those are not new but it is also true that the history of u.s. refugee policy is a story in which i would say that framing of national interests on the one hand and humanitarian on the other are merged. or rather they overlap in some really extraordinary ways. so the only way to explain, i'm going to suggest this as an argument in the lecture, the only way to explain why is it that the united states after the -- from 1945 to the near past is the most generous refugee nation in human history it accepts over half of the world's refugees. the reason for that is not necessarily because the united states is the most humanitarian of nations. but it's because of the important national stakes in

refugees. and that's important to understand why that's the case, why refugees had national significance and why the whole policy debate was around trying to define, understand why they mattered to the nation. not so much to a notion of human rights that are universal but to specific national interests. i will come back to the debate that we could have on the basis of your insights at the end of the class but i wanted to frame that as a point of departure. so national interests in short have really shaped the whole formation of u.s. refugee policy because it is foreign policy but also because the nation understood that its. >> military strategic interests were being advanced by refugees and the way you described it as foreign policy symbols. i should say as an side that the interests of refugees themselves

as historic agents, we left out. they're largely symbolic in the way we've described them. they are two voices. why those voices matter are important and we'll come back to them at the end of the lecture. what we're going to do today is go through some of the case studies about nation and humanity. in a weird way, it's a nice way of encapsulating a history of u.s. nationalism changing ideas of what an american is as well as a very specific policy story and we can see here, yeah, this is the overall -- it gives us the overview of what i'm going to cover today in slightly more condensed version than the outlines have you in front of you. today's goal is also an explicit about what i would call as a profound history deficit in the contemporary discussion. you described the significance, as well. but it is if you read the newspapers it's as if there is

no history to u.s. refugee policy, as if this is the first generation right now to be worried that refugees could be threatening our american security. or that they are going to weaken our standard of living or conversely that our very best most idealistic identity is at stake with refugees. that conversation is not new. it's been going on for a long time. that's reassuring on the one hand but we haven't really paid attention to that conversation either. so today's lecture is seeking to kind of redress that and i'd like to have time to discuss what we can use this history for. if we were to make an intervention in the contemporary discussion beyond this classroom. okay. who is a refugee? we're going to go through these. the question we're asking how have national interests shaped the history of u.s. refugee policy. i'm going to begin back in time a little before '65 to the jewish refugee question and also

to consider the definitions of refugees so that the book nicely points out for you "americans at the gate" by carl bon tempo. i hope you have bought this book. it's a really good book to read. we have a fascinating story that the category of refugee itself changes quite a lot over time. the 1980 law, we don't have a refugee law until 1980. even though the united states has accepted a great number of refugees before that moment in time. and in fact, the law is catching up to the interesting set of political practices by the state department and other actors. the refugee law in 1980 defines it as follows -- a refugee is a person fearful of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. they are existing outside the country of his or her nationality and unavailable to

avail himself or herself of the protection of that country. in effect, refugees are stateless actors who are absent the protection of a government and they're being persecuted by their home state for the following reasons. it's a very broad definition. in 1980 when the united states adopts this, we'll come back to this at the end of the lecture, they are really adopting for the first time in 1980 an international united nations definition of who a refugee is for the first time. this is what's interesting about this story is that in some respects the story of u.s. refugee generosity is one that occurs without this universalized definition. it occurs largely for national for more specific national reasons.

so before 1980, before the u.s. adopts this international standard, there are several definitions that emerge in the book and i just want to cover them quickly. that are very specific and they're very political. they're not universalized. the league of nations in 1926 didn't define a refugee but they described refugees in had the following fashion as a person of russian origin or armenian or gin who had lost the protection of the government. they were responding to a specific political calamity in the 1920s in the wake of armenian genocide and different factors involved in that. there wasn't a universalized definition of refugee in the league of nations or really before world war ii. in the wake of world war ii and the wake of the holocaust, we begin to see a more universalized language of human rights emerging that begins to shape a definition that the united nations advocates. but for the united states, it's still not -- they don't sign on to that definition of the kind of universal definition of a

refugee. the closest they get in 1948 is to describe displaced person who's were victims of nazi or fascist regimes deported because of forced labor racial, religious or political reasons. we begin to get some of the human rights language here but it's a specific narrative and a specific political story that defines who a refugee is. throughout most of the post-war period, most of the cold war, the definition of a refugee is a speak specific political one in the united states and it's a story about the cold war. who is a refugee? it is an anti-communist who cannot return to his or her homeland. that's who a refugee is pragmatically speaking. now, these may seem like inadequate definitions and in many respects they are. they don't hold they're filled with certain contradictions what's interesting for us right now is they're very specific historical narratives that are about u.s. foreign policy and also other national interests that were shaping the understanding of what a refugee,

why, a person became a refugee. so the history of u.s. refugee policy then takes this into account and is a story that is filled with ironies. i'll go through some of these moving forward. let's back up in time to 1939 when the word refugee begins to percolate quite specifically around the history of the emerging story that's unfolding about adolph hitter in germany and persecution that jews are experiencing. and refugees are carefully and closely connected to narratives about jewish people. so if you do a key word search, you'll find that consistently emerging. this is the boat, the "s.s. st. louis," that carried over 900 jewish refugees that managed to get out of europe in 1939 and were sailing for a safe harbor

in the new world. they came initially to work, were turned away from new york, and then tried to find a harbor in havana in cuba. and ultimately were denied there. they came back to new york again hoping once again for a kind of political wheel room that that would allow them to come in. prior to this, fdr had been seeking to get more jewish refugees to come to the united states by filling up the german quota that was in the national origins act. and a good many jewish refugee do come into the united states through that as germans, not as jews. unfortunately, this is exceeded the quota. these good folks exceeded the quota. and fdr at this point decided not, or did not imagine that as the president, he could find a way of bringing them into the nation. here are some images of these folks. lots of women and children. they had means.

they were better off than many refugees who could not get out. one of my teachers in graduate school managed to get out a few weeks before this from vienna and sailed into the united states and had to lie about her identity. her name was gerta lerner, founder of women's history at the university of wisconsin, an amazing story that she really had to sort of ironically lied to authorities to get in, said that she was already married, that she was an unaccompanied woman. never would have gotten in. they would have thought that she was a white slave, and she knew that. so, but she managed to get in. these good folks did not, and the united states turned them away. they sailed back to europe in 1939 as war was breaking out. and of the 940 or so on board, well over half met their death in death camps. and the story of this at the time would become a kind of

wound to the united states. this was perceived at the moment as a calamity, as a mistake by many. and yet, there was a tremendous amount of resistance to accepting jewish people into the united states, something that often gets forgotten after the holocaust. and the story of the holocaust as it unfolded over time will be one that will shape u.s. refugee policy in some really important ways. for now, what i'd like you to do is just highlight that fdr at the time may have felt ambivalent about this but saw himself as bound by the law of the national origins act and did not take any execute action that he might have. and we'll come back to what role the president or the congress or judicial actors had in shaping refugee policy. so, as american soldiers uncovered the atrocities of the holocaust in april 1945, they are key actors in shaping the knowledge of refugees and are

actually important sort of public opinion shapers. it is u.s. members of the 5th infantry who come to this sort of kingpin of germany's work camps, where most people worked, and then they worked nearly to death and then sent them off to auschwitz and other places to be executed. and they find thousands of bodies that have just recently perished. and the stories that u.s. troops tell are really powerful. it affected u.s. soldiers and shaped their perspectives. and that sort of slowly percolated back and shape a desire to make the united states a nation that would, could have prevented these wrongs from occurring. that said -- and here's the

difficult part of the story -- most americans, a good number of them remained deeply anti-semitic well after the post war period, well into the post war period, into the '40s, into the '50s. so that there is a kind of resistance to learning a different lesson from the holocaust. it doesn't change hearts and minds right away. and we'll come back to that. so, i would say that some of these case studies pivot the nation's interests against that of humanity. there's clearly a sense that there was a mistake made, humanity here, and jewish people lost. but the national interest was seen to be more important in 1939, and that persistence is really quite powerful through the immediate postwar period. let me turn to the late 1940s. as the cold war is beginning to shape up between the united

states and the soviet union, as conflicts are emerging, as the extraordinary challenge of reconstructing europe -- and there are millions of refugees in europe. several million germans have been displaced as well as other peoples, and so the refugee crisis in europe is profound in a way that we need to remember. and there is an anxiety that western europe will become communist as by the mid to late 1940s, an the united states is actively pursuing ways of preventing an expansion of the soviet union's bloc, if you will, in eastern europe into the western areas. and so, it's in that context in which refugees become extremely important. they are viewed as potential vectors of communism, also as agents who would be unstable in europe. and so, it's in this context in 1948 that truman pushes for a

displaced persons act. dp, displaced persons. not refugees exactly, but that's what he calls them. and they are offered visas to the united states, some 200,000 people. and it is initially sort of put forward by a group of more liberal inclusionists that our reading describes, but they are afforded in some profound ways by the actors who administer this program. so one of the interesting themes that's emerging in u.s. refugee policy history is who is the state? who is actually implementing the law? not simply what the law is on the face of it, but who gets to decide how people come in. and this is an interesting story in 1948. so, it's designed really to aid victims of nazism and fascism. that's the stated purpose of the displaced persons act, one would

think jewish people of those who survived. and yet of the 200,000, only about 20%, or 40,000 people, who are admitted are jewish, which is a fairly small percentage. and quite extraordinary are the number of people who are actually ex-nazis who come into the country under the displaced persons act. not only ex-nazis, nazi sympathizers coming along next to those same jewish victims of the world war ii. and this outrages some of the efficacy advocates in the united states. how did that occur? well, it occurred in part because of foreign policy considerations here, nation versus humanity. some of the people administering the law saw in these ex-nazis potential assets for u.s. foreign policy. and the author bon tempo describes this. he writes, "this was not coincidental. the admission of nazis, ex-nazis

or the fault of lax screening procedures but rather the work of american intelligence agencies who looked to turn them into agents fit for work behind the emerging iron curtain." so, the interests of fighting a cold war meant there was a approach with ex-nazis. they can speak the native language. they would be useful in fighting communism. so, this may seem like a corruption of the true humanitarian intent behind the refugee, this refugee act, of what displaced persons, who they were. but keep in mind, it's the foreign policy context. this act was passed as part of the u.s. marshall plan, seeking to rebuild europe from war and also to prevent the expansion of communism. and without that framing, the act wouldn't have occurred in the first place. another reason that there was vo few jewish people who got in or

fewer than we might have expected was because of who was implementing the law. and i'll bring in an important character, senator pat mccarron, who is one of the ardent restrictionists in u.s. political history, and he played a key role in shaping the displaced persons act. he was in dialogue with a lot of people who believed that this potential inclusion of refugees would be a way of getting around the national origins act and were skeptical of the fact that it could in effect bust or open up the united states to lots of people from southern and eastern europe who had been excluded. here senator william revercum, democrat of west virginia in 1948 -- we could solve this whole displaced persons problem. he stated, "all right, if we could simply work out a way and a bill that would keep out those jews." swear to god.

this is the desire to maintain a refugee policy that excludes jews that excludes eastern and southern europeans was at the forefront of public discussion. so, pat mccarron, he uses the displaced persons law to create a very elaborate set of screening procedures. among them asking your political history, you know, who do you support, what work have you done, what work could you do for the united states intelligence agencies. and they're actually looking to recruit people in the process. and a good number of germans and ex-nazis come in, in large measure because of the influence of the restrictionists. so, the idea that the u.s. nation would be a refugee nation is not really gaining a lot of traction at this point. it is still -- refugees are deemed to be of strategic value, of foreign policy considerations, but not necessarily ones that would open

the borders. we can see the restrictionist energy really clearly in the mccarron/walter act. i mentioned it in the last lecture, but i'll briefly touch on it. this was passed at the peak of the cold war. mccarron believed in the anxiety of the communist expansion was generating, believed that we had to recommend stronger, less porous border and if they were taking loyalty oaths, so should refugees and immigrants and how does that apply to the quota of the 1920s? mccarron/walter reiterates it, supports it, bolsters it, makes it much harder, in fact, for southern and eastern europeans, or jews, wherever they're coming from, to come into the united states. and it ended the prohibition on asian immigration but only gave

a very nominal number to chinese or japanese immigrants. so it says afterwards, now 100 can come in. so they get up to the minimal level of let's say greeks and others. so there is some modest, i suppose, changes, but they're really in effect reiterating what was existing law. and more importantly, there were -- it expanded the power of the state to deport immigrants, refugees, especially as communists or their sympathizers. and this was applied to retroactively. so, after mccarron/walter is passed, mexican and mexican americans are deported at much more efficient and large numbers. this is part of the authority that leads to what's called "operation wet back" on the u.s./mexican border, in which

authorities would come in and round up people as potentially security threats. it expands in person policy terms the significance of immigrants. every immigrant is a potential security threat. they all need to take loyalty oaths. and it is the state that largely decides, restrictionists who are administering this law. so, up to 1952, the notion that u.s. foreign policy would be liberalizing refugee law is far-fetched. it's quite the opposite. the anxieties on the border about so-called aliens is really driving a more restrictionist policy in u.s. immigration. so that begins to change in a really striking way. and this is in some ways where the story gets perhaps surprising or unpredictable. it begins with harry truman and also dwight d. eisenhower, both republicans and democrats see in anti-communism there is an opportunity to actually expand refugees and their significance in the u.s.'s effort to fight a global war against communism. so truman himself critiques mccarron/walter.

he vetoes the act and then is overridden by the authorities in 1952 at the end of his second term. but he goes down fighting, truman does. he writes, "the idea behind this discriminatory policy was to put above thee that americans with english or irish names make better american citizens than those with italian, greek or polish names. nationalistic thinking was unworthy of our traditions and ideals, like the great political doctrine of the declaration of independence that all men are created equal. the humanitarian creed inscribed beneath our statue of liberty, our belief in the brotherhood of man." he gives a kind of pluralistic understanding of the nation and used that to fight the restrictionist law, but that argument didn't do inch 1952.

it persuaded too few people. what changes, what empowers truman and what empowers other presidents is the argument about refugees being extraordinarily useful to fighting a cold war, that they are, in fact, in the nation's interests. and you can see this in the ways in which they redefine refugees as fundamentally not just political refugees but as anti-communists who are our allies, who are kind of prototypical americans as they fight communist oppression abroad and that we have an obligation to let them in because they're anti-communist. and one can see the kind of transformation of american identity along next to what a refugee is. the two are co-defining each other. so, truman does this in part in the refugee relief program. he proposes this in 1952. it doesn't become law until 1953. let's in some 200,000 people. and it's still sort of a

political football over who will control it and how it will be administered. it seeks to bring in those sort of, in effect, prototypical americans who are fighting against america's enemies and mostly brings in people from east germany, from the eastern european countries that are now under soviet domination. interesting here, emanuel sellers, author of the law, describes the refugees that he saw coming out of east germany as, "they would make great citizens if we let them into our country because they understand the meaning of liberty, they understand how they have been downtrodden, how liberty has been denied to them. i find them to be only too happy to come here to america, and they appreciate freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion." interesting of him to be saying that in 1953, the very moment when mccarthy is compromising freedom of expression and

freedom of the press. so there's a kind of interesting story in which people were fighting about the stakes of american democracy and americanism are using refugees to do that, to do that battle. so what then happens, it is put in. it's a modest proposal. it doesn't really take off. it is kind of bottled up by restrictionists under mccarron. and then a new foreign policy erupts -- opportunity, i should say, and that's in 1956 with the revolution in hungary that briefly topples the undemocratic soviet puppet state, and there is a sort of democratic socialist state that comes to power very briefly before soviet tanks come in and dramatically crush this domestic story. and this is a picture of budapest, dead people and soviet tanks in the background.

and it produces, not surprisingly, an extraordinary number of refugees who pour across the hungarian border into austria. in december of 1956 there are about 130,000 who are in austria. there is an echo here in the present. there are at least that many muslim refugees coming north into austria and they're being bottlenecked in the contemporary moment. today europe is awash in refugees. the same story is going on in 1956 here. the u.s. response is quite, quite different. so, what happens in december '56? none other than richard nixon, vice president, an ardent restrictionist, goes and visits austria and inspects the camps and comes home deeply moved about the absolute necessity of bringing in many more hungarians into the united states. and here's how this story gets also in some ways interesting again. how does he do that?

well, the refugee relief program is cumbersome. it takes a long time to get people processed and they need a more quick, more useful instrument for foreign policy. so what do they do? they use a little-known, it's called a codicil, a little known bureaucratic rule in the mccarron/walter act which allows the attorney general to bring someone into the country as a parolee, in effect to recognize that they're breaking the law and to parole them. and they're a parolee and they come in and they can stay in the united states without legal standing, but nonetheless, legally. that is to say, their citizenship status is not decided yet, but they're brought in and they're going to be safe. and this is the power that richard nixon as vice president and then dwight d. eisenhower uses to bring in most of the hungarian refugees.

it's quite apart in any congressional authorization and debate. many come in the spring of '57. 32,000 of them are parolees. the significance of this is quite dramatic and will in effect benefit every single president for the next half century that seek to use refugees to, in effect, as instruments of u.s. foreign policy and to change the relationship between actors. put this into contemporary perspective. the complaints about president obama using executive authority, usurping his constitutional role is an old complaint that congress has made about political leaders. in fact, it goes right back to the heart of this policy. this refugee policy is largely enacted by the executive branch at the expense of congress, and it's a good instrument.

it allows them to respond quickly to the hungarian crisis here, immigrants crossing into austria. that is the border right behind you, that machine gun post. many of them are orphans like these three kids. my babysitter was a hungarian refugee when i was -- she came over in 1956 and was a wonderful musician, and we loved her dearly. but anyhow, so, it gets closer to some of the personal story in our family. so, there is an effort by the state, by the state department after hungary, these refugees come in. they recognize that there is sort of political unpopularity. they seek to justify it, and the state department's interesting, the executive branch as well create a public relations campaign. they seek to persuade america that these refugees are, in fact, pro to americans, that their anti-communism makes them good americans. and they hire an ad firm that goes around and talks about

hungarians as this sort of seek to approve and burnish their ethnicity on one hand, but really play up their credentials as ardent anti-communists who risk their lives against a communist regime, and therefore are ipso facto americans in the formation, in the making. here is what one ad executive for the state department said to "life" magazine -- "you should be helping the american people realize that hungary has a rich and cultural heritage and past and that these refugees are not dopes coming from a cultural vacuum just because they don't know much english." then he encourages them to show them as what? not only good anti-communists, but as good american consumers. and there is this really interesting spread in "life" magazine as well as in "look" magazine that shows hungarian immigrants quickly adapting and loving america in abundance. here's one phrase from the article. "seven days after arriving in the united states, this weary refugee family was transformed

into four ecstatic minnesotans." i love that. well, they still don't speak english, but they seem to like their kitchen and their sink and what have you. and there's this fusing of american identity, consumer culture, stuff that we had talked about in the past, with also this political understanding of anti-communism that's really at the heart of the story. so, this is a pattern that's emerging. refugees are understood as in effect prototypically american and it's expanding numbers dramatically. this is the same story, then, moving forward in the cuban revolution that occurs in 1959. once again, a revolution involving, well, in this case fidel castro, who is initially not anti-american, but over the course of the revolution does become an ardent critic of the united states and embraces soviet aid and is deemed a communist. and those who are being

persecuted by castro and his regime are anti-communists and are welcomed into the united states as these prototypical americans. this occurs not without controversy, but the cuban story exemplifies this kind of liberalizing story within u.s. refugee policy. if the united states is this extraordinarily generous nation of refugees, it's because of its anti-communist campaigns, it's because of the cold war. this is no accident. it's really the reason the united states opens its doors. over the course of the 1960s, 500,000 cuban refugees arrive. basically to set foot on florida or on american soil makes them a refugee who has got protected legal status and a path to citizenship, unlike any other group in the western hemisphere. and the reason is because castro was in power. so it's an explicit part of u.s. foreign policy.

the cubans are important for a couple of reasons, cuban refugees, because refugee policy is largely a kind of version of an exceptional cuban policy. so refugee resettlement programs are put into place to help cubans that then become used for all refugees. they involve finding them jobs, housing, creating a bureaucracy to help aid in their resettlement. in 1966, the cuban status adjustment act is passed, which has a remarkable political story. it normalizes, it gives citizenship to cuban refugees. it also allows them to become dual citizens, which is -- there is no dual citizens in the united states in 1966. the first ones are cubans. and why is that? because they're passionate cold warriors. they're fighting castro, and if

they want to go back and fight castro, we want to support them. they should not give up their cuban citizenship. they can become americans, but we want them to become able, to in effect, achieve that foreign policy objective, which was to overthrow castro. and in effect, this kind of exception for cuban refugees becomes then a kind of law for a larger community of americans after 1967 because, actually, there's a supreme court case that says, well, in fact, u.s. citizens can become dual citizens in 1967, largely in the wake of the cuban story. so cuban exceptionalism, it's an interesting story. it is only understandable as a product of u.s. foreign policy objectives. it is extraordinarily generous to cubans and is leading to changes in the status of refugees across the spectrum as well. there are -- so, all these examples i'm giving you, just real quickly, there is a clear theme, which is that the united states is fighting a cold war with refugees, and its

generosity towards refugees is because of those foreign policy objectives. and that is largely unchallenged. it does not lead to that sort of convergence of foreign policy and domestic definitions. it does not change u.s. immigration law dramatically. the 1965 immigration reform act does very little for refugees. it doesn't make them central to the story. one might expect that it would have, that you would have had a lot of refugees being brought in because it is a cold war piece of legislation. but in effect, they don't need to because the law is aimed at helping those countries that have been fighting the cold war. it's no accident that the main beneficiaries of the reform act in 1965 are southern and eastern europeans. and why? greece, hungary, those same nations that have been fighting the cold war are the beneficiaries of that reform which repeals those national

origins quotas. okay, summarizing a lot. any questions at this moment before we look at this key turn to human rights? yeah. >> after the hungarian revolution. >> yeah. >> because nixon actually went to the refugee camps and had that experience, were his intentions coming from that humanitarian place and did he use the discourse of the cold war to kind of move american public opinion because he knew that would be most effective or were his intentions very much focused in the foreign policy interests? >> that's a great question. i don't have a good answer. i don't know his intentions. but if you do look later in nixon's career, i don't think -- nixon was an extraordinarily pragmatic politician. and what is clear is that in 1956, he saw the political

opportunity and he seized it, which was we can expand the power of the executive branch through refugees. and it's his insight that if we use this little-known, little provision here, parolee immigrants to refugees, we can get more in. that was good for foreign policy interests, which is what he was engaged with, and it also expanded the power of the president. and in that sense, that's very consistent with the later nixon who was the so-called imperial president. so, whether it was genuine humanitarian interests, probably not, but what's interesting is that the anti-communism was not framed as a humanitarian story. it was to some degree, but mostly, they were pro to americans. we have an obligation to accept them because they're americans, not because we are humanitarians. that is in some ways a troubling takeaway. we live in the context today

where, again, humanitarian understandings of the refugee define those political interests in one way that's not actually the way people understood it for much of the cold war. they were not incompatible, but that was not the framing. the main framing was that they were pro to american. does that answer the question? any other questions? yeah. >> this isn't refugee policy, but when did the influx of east and south asians primarily start beginning after the 1965 immigration act? because i know that really affected more people coming in. >> i'm about to turn to that very question and the unintended consequences of the '65 law have a lot to do with refugee law as well as the ways that the family reunification, which was at the heart of the '65 reform. one reason that -- the quick answer is how did the '65 law, which in some ways supported the admission of people who were already here, because family reunification would do that. it's kind of like a version of

the national origins act. how did it bring in so many asian immigrants? it did, because when you brought in lots of refugees from vietnam, from laos, from they start so send for their faechlz. when you bring in lots of refugees, you actually expand the family reunification story. t that twining is one of the main generators for the policy in expansion asian immigration post-65. >> at this point how does a communist country -- it would seem like we're fighting -- if the 1965 law was because of, like, cold war policies that they wouldn't want more than specifically chinese communists come in. >> that's a great question. why not more chinese refugees before the 70's when they do come? like, why not more chinese

refugees at the moment that china becomes communist in 1950? there are very few chinese refugees that come in. what do you think? thoughts? yeah. >> i believe the chinese government simply didn't let them out or, like, had very strong restrictions on the mobility of their people. >> there is that. where would they have fled to? in hungarian, they are flying into austria to a u.s. ally. it's easier to get them out. that's part of the story. there are u.s. allies in if asia certainly where they could have -- there are many refugees who do flee. they go to taiwan, but why not more taiwanese come from taiwan into the united states? the answer -- i already alluded to it. do you want to guess? >> maybe, like, historically anti-asian sentiment. >> absolutely. >> anti-asian sentiment has not gone away in 1952 or 1960.

the mckaren walter act has very strict national quotas still, and refugees are not counted as that, but it's largely in the foreign policy latitude. the united states before getting involved militarily, it wants to avoid a military conflict by and large with china in the 1950s. so that it's not seeking -- when you accept a country's refugees, you are actually -- it's almost like a statement of -- it's a foreign policy statement. it will become important later, and i guess maybe one sees the wake of the vietnam story. one can see there are many chinese refugees who come out of that context as well, so it's a good question. i don't have a -- that would be a great research paper. i know it's too late to come up with new topics. i like it. mahera. >> was there a screening for refugees coming from communist countries to make sure that they were anti-communist, and would fight communism, or was it assumed that because they were

trying to flee they were inherently anti-communist? >> so there was a screening procedure in all of these programs, and what's one of the interesting ironies that, in fact, many people fleeing the hungarian revolution were, in fact, communists. there's a different kind of communist. they had supported a different kind of democratic socialism that had overthrown the communist government, and there were screening procedures. one famous guy who is found out is a guy named samuel gambos where, 37-year-old. he is mentioned in it the book. he is a parolee. he had worked with the hungarian secret police and had been a main agent of the communist regime in repressing and suppressing the democratic revolt in hungary, and he comes out as a refugee. he is turned in by his fellow refugees that say that's the guy that put my parents in jail. the screening procedure seeks to capture those people, but it's not necessarily that effective. the fact is you are accepting

people from communist nations. the benefit of the doubt is you are fleeing communists. it's true for the cubans as well. you are fleeing castro. you are anti-communist. are you going to be pro-american. >> i don't really think there's an answer to this, but this reminds me of current debates about refugees from the middle east, and it's interesting that when people were fleeing communism, it was almost assumed that they could be an ally in fighting communism, the people who were fleeing, and they would be anti-communist, and, therefore, it's a tool to undermine communism by taking them. whereas, modern debates about accepting refugees from the middle east frames the refugee more as an agent of what they're fleeing and a threat because they come from that rather than an agent who could help to fight whatever regime they're fleeing. >> what do you think? that's a really good observation

because, in fact, what you see -- the only thing that's really changed radicily -- there are two things that have changed, and i'm jumping ahead in the lecture, which is fine. the two things that have really changed in refugee discussions. the first is that definition of refugee shifts to this humanitarian vision, chsz the 1980 refugee act and seeks to have a less policy-driven view of who a refugee is. even as that is enacted and as cold war liberalism itself is dismantled, those who support refugee admissions no longer make arguments about the national interest. it's the restrictionists who are making the arguments about national interests today. they are not new. they have been making that argument since 1939. it's the same damn argument. refugees are threatening our country. they are threats to our national security. keep them out. what is not happening is the argument you're making, which i think i'm hearing, which is

basically that -- actually we have a national interest in accepting more syrian and iraqi refugees. if we're going to fight isis, we should do that. we have a national interest. why in because they can speak arabic. that would be kind of important. they have an investment in fighting isis because they're refugees of isis, let's say. that argument is you see it occasionally. you don't see it very often, and you don't see it as a policy. so the numbers -- that's a good question. why is that the case? why do you think that's not the case. haley. >> do you think that the fear of, like, a national security danger was still present the way it is today at that time? it was just kind of overpowered by the belief that these anti-communist refugees would be more helpful? the chance that is you would have more helpful refugees than potential security threats were just, like, overpowered by fear, or was that fear, like, not there the same way it is today? >> i think the fear -- the fear

of communism was profound. i mean, not to say -- the only way to understand cold war liberalism is that it was motivated by a profound anxiety about communism. both abroad and at home. the question -- what's kind of remarkable is that refugees actually didn't threaten that anxiety. they were seen as allies, as assets in redressing those ang zbliets. they'll be allies in fighting this war. what the cold war was about was a way of redefining understanding american rights very much as anti-communist. that was the sort of essential glue to the whole rights discussion, which brings us back to the discussion we had last class about civil rights too.

without that it gave an opportunity for civil rights activists. why not in the present? yeah. well, no. sorry. >> they wouldn't actually be, like, the good cubans, the good hungarians. i think there is a fear now that there will be bad refugees posing as good refugees as, like, their ticket in. is that fear that you would actually get some bad refugees in that pool not there, or was it just overpowered? >> there was definitely that fear, and restrictionists were arguing, and they would find individual refugees who were actually, you know, bad actors or bad apples, and they would bring it up and try to reduce the number of refugees. i suppose what's really different about the war on terror is that the consequences of one bad refugee who is fully armed and detonates herself or himself is quite different from one person who would be idealogically a communist in the old, like -- what was the threat of an individual communist in, i

don't know, durham, north carolina, in 1955? probably not much. well, actually, we know. the communists in durham, north carolina, in 1940s, early 1950s, who were they? >> the union workers. >> the union workers who were saying let's dismantle jim crow segregation. those people were really dangerous. that's why they were repressed so hard. yeah. that's interesting to make those connections. i think that the similarities and differences are really quite striking. we're not going to have time to get through everything. i'm going to keep going, and we're going to continue this lecture. i want to make sure we get to the end. what we don't get through right now is fine. we have time in this lecture to keep moving forward. i would say one of the most interesting moments to focus in on. as in the wake of the vietnam war and the loss -- the united states lost there, the influx and the importation of lots of

vietnamese and laotian. they're americans because they're anti-communists. yes, that's true. they're not serving the same geopolitical strategic interests, if you will, because we've already lost the war. in some ways the rationale for accepting lots of them is to fight the communist power over there or to have a cohort of people who could infiltrate the communist regime that you're fighting is kind of obsolete because we've basically been losing the war. that's going on at the same time that this emerging language about human rights is gaining traction. largely in reaction to the immoralities of the vietnam war itself. the fact that this was a war against citizens. very often it was deemed, understood to be a very unfair inhumane war. that produces a different kind of language that justifies the significance of vietnamese refugees in very different terms. here the argument is less that they are useful in fighting a

cold war, and it's more of what you nushlly suggested, diane. we have an obligation because we lost the war to aid our allies, and so the stakes are still a cold war set of foreign policy stakes, but we're going to protect our own. we have allies in other places of the world, like iran or other countries that were revolutions about to explode, and if we abandon our allies in vietnam we're basically cutting loose our allies elsewhere. that's the argument that's used to bring in hundreds of thousands of vietnamese. we have to protect those who are u.s. allies in that fight. it changes -- it begins to change how we imagine -- americans imagine the significance and the foreign policy stakes of refugees. the 1980 refugee act seeks to kind of bring forward -- i'm skipping ahead kind of quickly here, but i'll fill in. it cements that image already described to you in the first set of slides of u.s. refugees

as human rights survivors, and there's a new litmus test in effect passed by a woman named liz holtzman that stipulate lates if you are going to be a refugee, not only do you have to be pro-american and perhaps anti-communist, but you should also renounce any former political persecution. you should be renounce torture. you should have renounce violating any of their essential human rights. the nation is re-imaged in the late 1970s as a human rights nation under jimmy carter, under several other actors. that's really what you see enacted in the 1980 law. and that changes profound, but when it sees it playing out in a dramatic fashion in the summer of 1980, right after the law has been passed with those are more hungarian refugees coming, here's the reaction that is generated to vietnamese refugees. the growing hostility towards refugees in the 1970s is

racialized because they're coming from asia, so that anti-asian sentiment has not gone away. sorry. this is what happens in this room. i cannot advance the slide. that's okay. so in the summer of 1980 you have a kind of dramatic pairing of two refugee crisis at the same time involving haitians and also involving cubans. both coming to the same shore in florida and here are -- these are from refugees from vietnam and laos who are waiting to be brought to the united states. this is a boat of cubans coming out of cuba in 1979 and 1980. they sort of pushed the

humanitarianism of the united states, and these cubans are in the exceptional strategy instant citizens. here's castro saying we don't want them, we don't need them. here are haitians coming in. god, look at that boat. that's just -- that imimage is striking. these are haitians sitting out for the coast of florida. look at that image. man. that is courage. they have a different kind of reception when they get to the united states. many of them are basically rounded up. many immigration centers are housing prospective refugees and to process them. decide whether they should be allowed into the country. the human rights regime that -- human rights languaging that emerges after the 80 refugee act has sought to change how u.s. refugee law is administered.

it shouldn't matter if you are fleeing a u.s. ally or a u.s. enemy. your refugee status should be universal. in practice that was not the case, and this is put to the test at this moment in time. haitians had a much harder time getting into the country as citizens. they had been denied citizenship or refugee status throughout the 1970s where cubans had been let in. the differences are about race. they're also about the cold war. these haitians had the misfortune of fleeing a u.s. ally, a u.s. dictator, and that meant that they were not good anti-communists. if anything, they were critics of u.s. foreign policy as they were understood. now, the u.s. refugee act seeks to change that. it doesn't change it overnight, and, in fact, you have a persistence of cold war policy playing itself out in the 1980s after this act is made law. one of the best examples are refugees of the el salvador

civil war. they are fleeing many of these refugees are fleeing u.s. backed right wing actors and come to the united states and are not allowed to become refugees, and so they seek instead to be under asylum law to become refugees after the fact, but they have a very hard time. most of them are denied admission or denied refugee or asylum status. let me give you in the five minutes we have left, i want to give you a story of one of those good people because i think it illustrates the ongoing and the endu enduring tension in u.s. refugee law between refugee status as a humanitarian law, the u.s. refugee act 1980 and national foreign policy interests. this is a story of a fellow named miguel. his real name i've changed. he is a dear friend of mine.

he is -- i would argue -- the best citizen in north carolina. i have never met any citizen better than him. by that i'll describe, he fled el salvador in 1983. he was forced to fight at the age of 12 for the marxist guerrillas. his parents were killed. he came into the united states at the age of 14, made his way to north carolina. he worked all kinds of jobs. he describes his first weeks in america as the most sort of beautiful days of his life because he could sleep without bombs blowing up and waking him at night. he was a refugee of a horrific civil war. by any definition he would have been -- should be a refugee. he applied finally when he came to north carolina for -- under

asylum law for refugee status. his case was pending for 17 years. what happened? after 17 years the ruling finally came down. the civil war is over. you no longer have an asylum claim. you're going to be deported. in the meantime, he had been a legal resident as an asylum seeker. miguel, however, at this very moment in time had also been doing other things. among them, deciding that democracy really was a beautiful thing, and he had decided to register more voters than any other. there was a voter registration contest in 2008 during the political mobilization, and miguel won. he registered more than 2,000 voters in durham county by himself. he was an extraordinary canvasser. no one could say no to this guy. he was incredibly persuasive.

his own personal story just -- people would register. he registered all kinds of people. communists, anarchists. he measured -- he registered, like i drks a member of the klan. what the heck? why not? if you want to be a klansman? fine. you can vote. you can register that as your party. you can do that. he then met a candidate named barack obama, for having won the contest to register more people. not democrats alone. but this ruling came down shortly thereafter, and he was put into deportation. he had to fight it, and he became, saturday of this, a ferocious critic of the united states. it's also interesting. to me as a kind of citizen he recognizes that perhaps the best measure of citizenship is to be a critic, says and on his car there's a picture of barack obama, and he hollowed out the

face of obama and left it on there because he was so pissed off because president obama, he argued, deported more immigrants than any president in u.s. history. there's some factual accuracy there. a sense of betrayal. as a citizen, as someone who understood what democracy is, says why descent matters, why is he passionately in love with this nation, i can't imagine anyone who understands -- to me he is -- i don't agree with him. he is the perfect american, if there is such a thing. he is the perfect citizen. he understands the stakes of democracy, what makes it work, how he has an investment in every one of you speaking and having a vote, and he is still in legal limbo. he is not a u.s. citizen. that's why his name is miguel for the purpose of this discussion. he is likely to get a path to citizenship after all, but it's

costing a lot of money. that's neither here nor there. i think the story is illustrative of the stakes. he is both a person who -- refugees understand this. in many respects they understand america and what makes america, if you will, the nation of refugees better than many americans do and has an idealism about this place that would be refreshing if people listened to it. the story of refugee policy is complicated. we haven't wrapped it all up. we'll come back to it. it links nation and humane interests at every turn. whether we listen to advocates like miguel is another story, but if we did, i think the discussion would change radically. thank you very much. we will have more debate about this relationship between humanitarian and nationalism. thanks very much. thanks for your questions.

>> american history tv airs on c-span 3 every weekend telling the american story through events, interviews, and visits to historic locations. this month american history tv is in primetime to introduce you to programs you could see every weekend on c-span 3. our features include lectures in history, visits to college classrooms across the country, to hear lectures from top history professors. american artifacts takes a look at the treasures at u.s. historic sites, museums, and archives. real america revealing the 20th century through archival films and newsreels. the civil war where you hear about the people who shape the civil war in reconstruction, and the presidency focuses on u.s. presidents and first ladies to learn about their politics, policies, and legacies. all this month in primetime and every weekend on american history tv on c-span 3. all week in primetime it's american history tv where we'll feature programs from our

lectures in history series in which we take you into college classrooms across the country. each night leads off with a debut of a new class, and tonight it's sexuality in america. we start at 8:00 eastern with a lecture on the origins of the gay rights movement. that's followed by a discussion on sexual freedom in the 1950s. gays and lesbians in early 20th century america, and then race and sex education in if the mid 20th century. that's tuesday on american history tv here on c-span 3. with the house and senate returning from their summer break next week, on thursday at 8:00 p.m. eastern we'll preview four key issues facing congress this fall. federal funding to combat the zika virus. >> women in america today want to make sure that they have the ability to not get pregnant. why? because mosquitos ravage pregnant women. >> but today they turn down the very money that they argued for

last may, and they decided to gamble with the lives of children like this. >> the annual defense policy and programs billing. >> all of these votes are very vital to the future of this nation. in a time of turmoil, in a time of the greatest number of refugees since the end of world war ii. >> gun violence legislation and criminal justice reform. >> every member of this body, every republican and every democrat wants to see less gun violence. >> we must continue to work the work of non-violence and demand an end to senseless killing everywhere. >> and the resolution for congress to impeach irs commissioner john -- >> house resolution 828 impeaching john andrew koskinen, commissioner of the internal revenue service, for high crimes and misdemeanors. >>