>> al, your great-grandfather was my favorite kind of governor . the kind who ran for president andthe kind who ran for presidet and lost. al, you are right. a campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes. blue jeans in the morning, suits for a fundraiser, a sport coat for dinner. it is nice to relax and where what we wear around the house. watch the out smith memorial foundation dinner with hillary clinton and donald trump, thursday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span and c-span.org. listen with the c-span radio app. on lectures and history, professor gunther peck teaches a class on america's refugee policy during the cold war. he describes how people fleeing communist countries like cuba were given easier access to the

united states. he also talks about how race played a role in quotas. such as limiting immigrants from asian communities. his class is about an hour and 10 minutes. prof. peck: welcome to class. we have some visitors. welcome to duke university. my name is gunther peck. i teach history. this is a cross-listed course called immigrant dreams and american realities. we are wrestling with the wonderful complexity of visions of america that immigrants bring to our national story. you are welcome to participate in the discussions. just raise your hand and i will pull you in. i know you have done the readings. no worries. ok. today's lecture is called "linking nation and humanity: u.s. refugee policy 1945-1980."

we will focus on this important subset of immigration law that we have touched on, but not really focused yet squarely in the class. i want you to fit it into where we were at the end of last class, which was the lecture on 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 the immigration reform act was passed, as part of a broader campaign in inciting a cold war. that is especially true with u.s. refugee policy, a perfect intersection of u.s. foreign policy and immigration policy. before we begin, we have a couple of images of the

presidents, and i wanted to have a brief discussion before we dive into that, about u.s. refugees and their significance to the contemporary moment we live in. they are frequently invoked. maybe we could just describe -- i'm curious as to how you would describe why refugees matter today. what we have here is an image of refugees that are being led into the attention off of underage minors who are picked up at the u.s.-mexican border last summer when the refugee issue was burning quite vividly in the nation's newspapers. here is another image of a refugee, unaccompanied minors heading north. this is not on public transportation, but on a specially chartered train that

most of the people here had paid traffickers to get across the border, and that is what we are looking at. if we could just begin -- i want to hear from you, and instead of me telling you why refugees matter, they do, i just am curious if we can get a few ideas of why refugees matter. it's a simple lesson, but it does have a lot of stakes. why do politicians talk about refugees right now? what are the stakes of refugees today? student: the issue of whether to allow them in or not has changed to a human rights question. it's really a question of how the u.s. embodies our democracy by thinking and enacting

policies linked to all people being equal. and free from violence. prof. peck: great comments. there is a humanitarian set of stakes. a refugee is someone who deserves, by virtue of their suffering, acceptance into the nation. you alluded to the stakes, though. why should the united states care about those refugees? that is obviously one set of stakes. that is obviously not the way refugees are being discussed. what are some of the other ways. why do they matter for the nation? student: i think the public image -- [inaudible] there are countries that look a lot better than us, and that matters.

prof. peck: in comparison to germany right now, the united states looks quite uncharitable. germany has taken in 1.1 million syrian refugees last year alone, and we are debating whether to take zero or 10,000. there is the debate. student: [inaudible] >> it has become a security issue. refugees equal anxiety about national security. student: also, the intersection between domestic policy and foreign policy. something goes to the american people about what it means to be american, that we are accepting of people in difficult situations around the world, and numeral so saying something at

-- you are also saying something at the international stage about what america is willing to do in order to help people around the world, and which causes they are willing to help, from where they are willing to accept people, and which issues they view as issues that would constitute refugee status. prof. peck: you summarized the complex domestic and international stakes in individual refugees. elizabeth? student: i don't necessarily agree it with this, but refugees are coming into this country as dependents, so it becomes an economic issue that will be mentioned on both sides, worrying about how it will impact our economy, and what we will have to do as u.s. citizens to support them. prof. peck: an anxiety about their public dependents, or a security threat, yeah. student: to go with the point about international issues, in the future, you can go back and

say we have accepted some way refugees in this region, and it has a political capital for future negotiations. prof. peck: great term, political capital. yes. student: this is an opinion i don't personally hold, but i have always seen the u.s. accepting refugees as a form of justice for what happened in the middle east specifically. a lot of iraqis being displaced because of the war. who should be responsible for that? refugees should be the country directly involved in that war. it's almost a failed state. prof. peck: i love how your comments are actually arguments, and that's great, because you are highlighting the stakes of why refugees matter, and one of the arguments that you are making is that refugees matter

because we have civilian obligations to the nations that have been part of u.s. foreign policy. iraqis clearly, if they are suffering after the u.s. invasion of the united states, the belief is that we have an obligation to help them. there is no consensus about what the stakes are with refugees. i think we have covered most of the key stakes. i would frame it, there is a set of stakes -- the way the debate works today, and there is kind of convergence on the left and right, which is, on the one hand, the national stakes on refugees might be humanitarian, but we have interest in human rights that transcend the state. the refugees' interest, we in that, if it is

an iraqi refugee, let's say. and those who are critical of refugee policy view them as a threat to a nation, either economic or political, that they are somehow literal security threats, terrorists, or potential terrorists, or as people who will threaten our standard or living, what have you. the arguments have been polarized between humanitarian interest on the one side and national security interests on the other. that is the contemporary framing of the refugee issue and why they matter. what is interesting about that story is that those are not new, but this refugee policy is the framing of national interest and humanitarianism, and they are merged. were they overlap in extraordinary ways. the only way to explain why it is that the united states, after

the -- from 1945 to the near past, is the most generous refugee nation in history? accepts over half of the world's refugees? the reason for that is not necessarily because the united states is the most humanitarian nation, but it is because of the important national stakes in refugees. that is important to understand, why that is the case. why refugees have national significance, and why the whole policy debate was around trying to define and understand why they matter to the nation. not so much to a notion of human rights that are universal, but to specific national interest. i want to 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. national interests have shaped the whole permission of u.s. policy not only because it is

foreign policy, but because the nation understood that particular strategic interests were being advanced by individual refugees, and the way you described them as foreign policy symbols, i should say that the interest of refugees themselves as historical agents we left out. they are largely symbolic, the way we describe them. they are actual voices. why those voices matter a really important, and we will come back to that at the end. what we will do today is go through the case studies about nation and humanity, and in a weird way it is encapsulating history of u.s. nationalism, changing ideas of what an american is as well as a very specific policy story. we can see here, if it gives us the overview of what i am going

to cover today, a slightly more dense version of the outlines of front view. -- in front of you. today's goal is also an explicit one about what i would call a profound history deficit in the contemporary discussion. you described the significance as well, but it is as if you read the newspaper and there is no history to u.s. refugee policy. it is as if there is the first generation 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 best, most idealistic identity is at stake with refugees. that conversation is not new. it is as old as u.s. refugee policy. that is reassuring on the one hand, but we have not really paid attention to that conversation either. today's lecture is looking to address that. i would 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 the classroom. who is a refugee? we are going to go through these. the question we are asking is how have national interest shaped the history of the u.s. refugee policy. i will begin back in time, to the jewish refugee question, and also to consider the definition of refugees. the book points out nicely, i hope you have bought it, a good book to read -- we had a fascinating story that the category of a refugee changes over time. the 1980 refugee 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. the law is catching up to the

interesting set of political practices by the state department and other actors. the refugee law of identity defines it as follows. a refugee is a person who is fearful of being persecuted for reasons of race, nationality, or political opinion. they are existing outside the country of his or her nationality, and they are unable 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 are being persecuted by their home states of the following reasons. it is a very broad definition. in 1980 when the united states adopts this, they are adopting an international united nations definition of what a refugee is. for the first time. what is interesting about this story is that, in some respects, the story of a refugee's

generosity is one that occurs without this universalized definition. it occurs or more specific national reasons. before 1980, before the u.s. adopted this standard, there are several definitions that emerge, and i want to cover them quickly. they are very specific and not universalized. in 1926, the league of nations did not really to find a -- define a refugee, but they described refugees in the following fashion, as a person of russian origin who had lost the protection of government. they were assigned to specific political calamity in the 1920's in the wake of the armenian genocide and different factors involved in that. there was not a universalized definition of refugee in the league of nations, or even before world war ii.

in the wake of world war ii, we begin to see a more universalized language of human rights emerging that begins to shape the definition of the united nations advocates. for the united states, they do not sign on to the definition of the kind of universal definition of a refugee. the closest they get in 1948 is described displaced persons who have been deported because of forced labor or racial, religious, or political reasons. we get some of the human rights language, but it is a specific political story that defines you a refugee is. throughout most of the postwar period, the definition of a refugee is very specific, and it is a story about the cold war. who is a refugee? it is an anti-communist to cannot return to his or her homeland.

these may seem like inadequate definitions. in many respects, they are. they are filled with certain contradictions. what is interesting for us right now is that they are very specific historical narratives that are about u.s. foreign policy and other national interests that are shaping the understanding of why a person became a refugee. the history of u.s. refugee policy takes this into account, and it is a story that is filled with irony. i will go through some of these moving forward. but back up in time to 1949, when the word "refugee" begins to percolate quite specifically around the history of the emerging story that is unfolding about adolf hitler in germany, and the persecution jews are

experiencing. if you do a keyword search, you will find that emerging. this is the boat, the uss st. louis that carried over 900 jewish refugees that got out of europe in 1939 and were sailing for a safe harbor in the new world. they came initially to new york, were turned away, and then tried to find a harbor in havana, cuba, and ultimately were denied there, they go back to new york again, hoping for a political will room that would allow them. prior to this, fdr had been seeking to get more jewish by filling up the german quota. jewish refugees come

into the united states as that as germans. unfortunately, this exceeded the quota, these good folks exceeded the quota, and fdr did not imagine that, as president, he could find a way to bring them into the nation.quota, these god here are some images of these folks. lots of women and children. they had means. they were better off than many. one of my teachers in graduate school managed to get out a few weeks before this from vienna and had to lie about her identity. she was the founder of women's history at the university of wisconsin, an amazing story that she had to lie 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 she was

a white slaves, and she knew that. she managed to get in. these good folks did not, and the united states turned them away. they sailed back in 1939 as war was breaking out. of the 940 or so, on board well in nazi death camps. and the story of this at the time became a 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 unfolds over time will the one that will shape u.s. refugee policy in important ways. for now, what i would like you

to do is just highlight that fdr at the time had felt ambivalent, but saw himself as bound by the law of the national origins act. he did not take any executive action. we will come back to what role the president or the congress or judicial actors had in shaping refugee policy. as american soldiers uncovered the atrocities of the holocaust in april of 1945, they were key actors in shaping the knowledge of refugees, and are actually important to public opinion chambers. it is u.s. members of the fifth infantry who come to the kingpin of germany's work camps, where most people worked to death and were sent out to auschwitz and other places to be executed, and they find thousands of bodies

that had recently perished. the stories that u.s. troops tell are really powerful. they affected u.s. soldiers and shaped their perspectives. that slowly percolated back and shaped the desire to make the united states a nation that could have prevented these wrongs from occurring. that said, and here is the difficult part of the story -- most americans remained deeply anti-semitic well after the postwar period. into the 1940's, into the 1950's. there is kind of a resistance to learning a different lesson from the holocaust. it does not change hearts and minds right away. we will come back to that. i would say that some of these case studies pivot the nation's interest against that of humanity.

there is a sense there was a mistake made. humanity and jewish people lost, but the national interest was seen as more important in 1939, and that persistence is quite powerful through the immediate postwar period. we turn to the late 1940's. as the cold war is beginning to as the cold war is beginning to shape up, as the extraordinary challenge of reconstructing europe -- and there are millions of refugees in europe, several million germans displaced as well as other people -- so the refugee crisis in europe is profound. and there is an anxiety that western europe will become communist by the mid to late 1940's. and the united states is actively pursuing ways of preventing an expansion of the soviet union's bloc in eastern europe into the western areas.

it is that context in which refugees become extremely important. they are viewed as potential vectors of communism, also as agents that would be unstable in europe. so it is in this context in 1940 8 that truman pushes for a displaced persons act, not refugees exactly, but that's what he called them. they are offered visas to the united states, some 200,000 people. it is initially put forward by a group of liberal inclusionists. one of the interesting themes in u.s. refugee policy history is who is the state?

who is actually implementing the law? who gets to decide how people come in? this is an interesting story. it is designed to aid victims of nazism and fascism. that is the stated purpose of the act. people ofthink jewish those who survived. and yet of the 200,000, only about 20% of the people are jewish, a fairly small percentage. 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, but nazi sympathizers coming along with the victims of world war ii. this outrage is some of the refugee advocates. so how does that occur? it occurred in part because of foreign-policy considerations, nation versus humanity.

some of the people who were administering this loss saw in these ex-nazis potential assets for u.s. foreign policy. the author describes this. he writes, "this was not coincidental, or the fault of lax screening procedures come about rather the work of american intelligence agencies . the importance of fighting a a cold war meant there was a quick rapprochment. they can speak the native-language. they would be useful in fighting communism. this may seem like a corruption of the true humanitarian intent behind this refugee act, but keep in mind it is in a foreign-policy context. this act was passed as part of

the u.s. marshall plan, seeking to rebuild europe from war and to prevent the expansion of communism. without that framing, the act would not have occurred in the first place. another reason that there was very few jewish people who got in was because of who was implementing the law. i will bring and a character that is important, senator pat mccarran, one of the ardet restrictionist in the 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 open up the united

states to lots of people from southern and eastern europe who had been excluded. here is a democrat of west virginia in 1948. we could solve this whole displaced persons problem, he stated, if we can simply work out a bill that could keep out those jews. the desire to maintain a refugee policy that excludes jews was at the forefront of public discussion. pat mccarran uses the displaced persons law to create an elaborate set of screening procedures. among them, asking your political history, who do you support, what work have you done, what work could you do. they are actually looking to recruit people. a good number of germans and i ex-nazis come in.

so, the idea that u.s. nations would be a refugee nation is not really gaining a law attraction 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 mccarran walter act of 1952. i mentioned it in the last lecture. this was passed at the peak of the cold war. mccarran believed in anxiety the communist expansion was generating. believed we had to have stronger force in order, and if americans are taking an anti-communist oaths, so should refugees and immigrants. how does that apply to the national origins quota.

it makes it much harder to act for southern easterners, europeans or jews to come into the united states. at the end of the prohibition on asian immigration, but only gave a very nominal number to chinese or japanese immigrants. it says, afterwards, now 100 can come in. they get up to the minimal level of, let's say, greeks and others. there are some modest changes, but they really reiterate what was existing. more importantly it expanded the , power of the state to deport immigrants, refugees, especially as communist or sympathizers. this applies retroactively. after it was passed mexican and

, mexican americans are deported at much more efficient and large numbers. it is part of the authority that leads to operation wet back on the u.s. and mexican border. authorities would round up people as security threats. it expands and foreign policy terms, this significant of immigrants. every immigrant is a security threat, and it is the state to decide the restriction of administering this law. up to 1952, the notion that the foreign policy would be liberalizing, it is quite the opposite. the anxiety is on the border, so called aliens is driving a more restrictionist policy. it changes in a shocking way. this is 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 expand refugees and their significance in the u.s. to fight a global war against communism. truman himself critiques the act initially and then is overridden by the congressional majority in 1952, at the end of his second term. but he goes down fighting, truman does. he says the idea behind the discriminatory policy was to put it that americans with english or irish names make that are american citizens then americans with italian, greek or polish names. it was utterly unworthy of our tradition and ideals, that all

men are created equal. the humanitarian creed inscribed that the belief in the brotherhood of man. it gives a pluralistic understanding of the nation, and uses that to fight the restrictionist law. that argument did not do much in 1952, it persuaded to a few people. what changes, what empowers truman and what empowers other presidents is the argument about refugees being extraordinarily useful to fighting the cold war. they are in the nation's interests. you can see this in the ways in which they redefine refugees as fundamentally, not just political refugees, but as anti-communist who are our allies and prototypical americans as they fight communist oppression abroad. we have an obligation to let them in because they are anti-communist. one can see a transformation of

american identity along next to the refugee. they define each other. truman does this in part, in a refugee relief program, he proposes in 1952 that it does not become law until 1953. let's in some 200,000 people, and it is still political football over who will control it and how it will be administered. it seeks to bring in those prototypical americans who are fighting against america's enemies. mostly it brings in people from east germany, from the eastern european countries that are under soviet domination. interesting here, manuel sellers, the author of the law describes the refugees that he saw coming out of east germany. they would make great citizens if we let them into the country because they understand the

meaning of liberty, how liberty has been denied to them. i find them to be too happy to come here to america, and the freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion. interesting of him to say that in 1953, the very moment when mccarthy is in this compromising position of freedom of the press. there is this interesting story in which people are fighting about the stakes of american democracy, and americanism by using refugees to do that battle. what then happens, it is put in a modest proposal that does not take off, it is bottled up by restrictionist under the act. ts,ew foreign-policy erup opportunity i should say.

that is in 1956 with the revolution in hungary that briefly topples the undemocratic soviet puppet state. there is a democratic socialist state that comes to power. very briefly before soviet tanks come in and dramatically crushes the domestic story. this is the picture of budapest and the people in soviet tanks in the background. it produces, not surprisingly, an extraordinarily number of refugees. they crossed the hungarian border into austria. in december of 1956, there are about 130,000 who are in austria. there are at least that many muslim refugees coming north into austria and they are being bottled back. today, europe is awash in refugees, the same story is going on in 1956. the u.s. responses is quite

different. what happens in 56? 19 richard nixon goes and visits the camps andcts is moved about bringing in hungarians into the united states. here is how the story gets interesting again. how does he do that? the refugee relief program is cumbersome and takes a long time to get people process. they need a more quick, useful instrument for foreign policy. what do they do? they use a little-known political bureaucratic rule in the mccarran walter's act. it allows the attorney general to bring in someone from the country as a parolee. to recognize that they are breaking the law and to parole them. they are a parolee and they can come in and stay in the united states without legal standing,

but nonetheless, legally, that is to say there citizenship status is not decided yet, but they are brought in and they will be safe. this is the power that richard nixon, as vice president -- as eisenhower does to bring in the refugees. it is without authorization and without any real debate. 38,000 hungarians come to the united states in 1957, the spring of 1957. 32,000 of them are parolees. the significance of this is quite dramatic and will benefit every single president for the next half-century. to use refugees 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, using his

constitutional role is an old complaint that congress has made about political leaders. in fact, it goes right back to the heart of the policy. the refugee policy is an active by the executive branch of the -- at the expense of congress. it is a good instrument and allows them to respond quickly to the hungarian crisis here with immigrants crossing into austria, that is the border right behind you with the machine gun posts. many of them are orphans like these three kids. my babysitter was a hungarian refugee, in 1966 and was a wonderful musician. we loved her dearly, but anyhow, it gets closer to a personal story. there is an effort by the state, by the state department after hungarian refugees come in. they recognize that there is a political popularity.

they seek to justify it and the state department and executive branch create a public relations campaign to persuade america that these refugees are proud americans. their anti-communism makes them good americans. they hire an ad firm, it goes around and talks about hungarians as this seek to improve and really play up their credentials as anti-communist s who risk their lives against the regime and our americans 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 refugees are not coming from a cultural vacuum, just because they do not know much

english." show them as what, show them as good american consumers. there is this interesting spread in life magazine, as well as in look magazine that shows on gary hungarians adapting and loving americans. after arriving in the united states, this refugee family was formed into ecstatic minnesotans. i love that. they do not speak english, but they seem to like their kitchen and their sink. there is this fusing of american identity consumer culture, with also this political understanding of anti-communism that is at the heart of the story. this is a pattern that is emerging, refugees are understood as prototypical he ly american and is expanding the numbers quite are medically. this is the same story moving forward in the cuban revolution that occurs in 1959.

once again, a revolution involving, well, in this case del castroastro -- fi who is 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. those who are being persecuted by castro and his regime is anti-communist. this occurs not without controversy, but the cuban story exemplifies this kind of liberalizing story within u.s. refugee policy. if united states is an extraordinary generous nation of refugees, it is because it's anti-communist campaign. it is because of the cold war. this is no accident, it is really the reason the united states opens its doors. over a half of a million cuban refugees arrive.

to set foot on florida or on american soil, it makes them refugees who have protected legal status. unlike any other group in the western hemisphere. the reason is because castro was in power. it is an explicit part of u.s. foreign policy. the cubans are important for a couple of reasons. refugee policy is a version of an exceptional cuban policy. refugee resettlement programs are put into place to help cubans, but then become used for all refugees. they involve finding them jobs, housing, creating a bureaucracy to help aid in their settlement . in 1956, the cuban status adjustment act has passed, which has a remarkable political story. it normalizes and gives citizenship to cuban refugees, and also allows them to become dual citizens.

there is no dual citizens in the united states in 1966. the first ones were cuban. why is that? because they are passionate cold warriors. they are 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. we want them to be able to achieve that foreign-policy objective, which is to overthrow castro. this kind of exception for cuban refugees becomes a kind of law for a larger community of americans after 1957. the supreme court case does well. they can become citizens largely in the wake of the cuban story. it is an interesting story, it is only understandable as a product of u.s. foreign-policy objectives. it is extraordinarily generous for cubans.

it is leading to changes in the status of refugees across the spectrum as well. all of these examples i am giving you, really quickly, there is a clear theme. it is that the united states is fighting a cold war with refugees, and its generosity towards refugees is because of those foreign-policy objectives. that is largely unchallenged. it does not lead to a convergence of foreign-policy and domestic definitions. it does not change u.s. immigration dramatically. there was very little for refugees, it does not 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 do not need to because the

law is aimed at helping those countries that have been fighting the cold war. the main beneficiaries of the reform act of 1965 are southern and eastern europeans. greece, hungary, the same nations that have been fighting the cold war are beneficiaries of that reform, which performs -- repeals those quotas. any questions before we look at this? >> after the hungarian revolution, because nixon went to the refugee camps, where his intentions coming from a humanitarian place? were his intentions very much focused in the foreign-policy? >> i do not have a good answer.

i do not know his intentions. if you do look later in nixon's career, i do not think -- nixon was an extraordinarily pragmatic politician. what is clear is that he saw the political opportunity and he seized it. which was, we can expand power at the executive branch through refugees. it was his insight that if we use this little-known provision ng immigrants to refugees, we can get more in. that was good for foreign-policy interests, which is what he was engaged with. it also expanded the power of the president. that is very consistent with the later nixon who was the so called imperial president. whether it was general humanitarian interest, probably not. what is interesting is that the anti-communism was not framed as

a humanitarian story. it was to some degree, but mostly they were proto-american . we have an obligation to accept them because they are american, not because we are humanitarian. that is in some way the troubling takeaway. we live in the context of where humanitarian understandings of the refugee defines those anyway that is not actually the way people understood it for much of the cold war. the main framing was that they were proto-american. does that answer the question? >> [indiscernible] i know that really affected -- in the end. >> the consequence of the 65 law has a lot to do with refugee

law. as well as the ways in which family reunification was at the heart of the 65 reform. a quick answer is, how did the 65 law, which in some ways supported the admission of people who were already here because family ramifications would do that. how did it bring in so many asian immigrants? it did because it when you brought in lots of refugees from vietnam, cambodia, what did they start to do, they started to fend for their families. you bring in lots of refugees and you actually expand the family's story. that twining of immigration policy is one of the main generators of the transformation in the expansion of asian immigration post 1965. >> china is a communist country, right?

so if it was because of the cold war policies, and china was communist. >> why not more chinese refugees before the 1970's? why not more chinese refugees at the moment that china becomes communist in 1950? there are very few chinese refugees who come in. what do you think? >> i believe the chinese government had very strong restrictions on the mobility of their people. >> where would they have fled to? hungarians fled into austria and it is easier to get them out, that is part of the story, but there are u.s. allies in asia.

they go to taiwan, but why did did not more taiwanese and chinese come to the united states? anti-asian sentiment? >> absolutely. the mccarran walter act has very strict national protocol. refugees are a way around it. it is largely in the foreign-policy latitude. the united states, before getting involved, if it wants to avoid a military conflict with china in the 50's. when you accept the country's refugees it is like a foreign-policy statement. it will become important later. i guess one sees the wake of the vietnam story, much of the bed

there are many chinese refugees that come out of that context as well. it is a good question. that would be a great research paper, i know it is too late to come up with more topics. anyway. i like it. a screening to make sure that they were anti-communist and would fight communism? or was it because they were trying to flee inherently anti-communism? >> there was a flee procedure in -- there was a screening procedure in these programs. many people fleeing the hunt garian revolution were anti-communist. it is a different kind of communism. it was a different kind of democratic socialism that had overthrown the communist government. there were screening procedures. one famous guy who was found out is a guy named samuel. he is mentioned in the book. he had worked with the secret police and had been a main agent of the communists regime in

suppressing the democratic revolt. and comes out as a refugee. he is turned in by his fellow refugees. they say that is the guy who put my parents in jail. the screening procedures capture those people, but it is not that effective. you are right. the fact is, you are accepting people from communist asian and the benefit of the doubt is that you are fleeing communist. true for the cubans as well. you are fleeing castro, if you were anti-communist, even if you are not you were -- you will do be pro- america. >> this reminds me of current debates about refugees from the middle east. it is 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. they would be anti-communist and it would be a tool to undermine communists by seeking them.

modern debate about accepting refugees from the middle east, frames the refugee more as an agent of what they are fleeing and as a threat of coming from that, rather as a agent who could fight whatever regime they are fleeing. >> that is a really good observation. in fact, the only thing that has really changed radically, two things have changed. i am jumping ahead. two things i have really changed in refugee discussion. the first is that the definition of refugee shift to the humanitarian vision, which is the 1980 refugee act. it seeks to have a more, less form policy driven understanding what a refugee is. as cold war liberalism itself is kind of dismantled, those who support refugee admission no longer make argument about the national interest.

it is the restriction us who are making the arguments about national interest today. they are not new, they have been making the argument since 1939. it is the same argument. refugees are threatening our country. they are a threat to our national security, keep them out. what is not happening is the argument you are making, which i think i am hearing. we have a national interest in accepting more syrian refugees. if we will fight isis, we need to do that. we have a national interest, they can speak arabic, that is an important. they are refugees of isis, let's say. they have an investment to find them. the argument is, you see it occasionally, not very often and you do not see it as a policy. that is a good question, why is that the case? why do you think that is not the case? >> do you think the fear of a

national security danger was still present at that time, but it was overpowered by the police. [indiscernible] is that fear not there? >> it was motivated by a profound existential anxiety by communism both abroad and at home. what is remarkable is that refugees did not set in that anxiety. they were seen as allies, as assets in redressing those anxieties. if we get the good hungarians, if we get the good greeks who were victims of the civil war there, if we get the good cubans, if you will. good means the patriotic

americans already information, then they will be allies in fighting this war. what the cold war was about was a way of redefining and understanding american rights, very much as anti-communist. that was the essential glue to the whole discussion. which brings back civil rights. without that, it gave an opportunity to civil rights activists. i guess the question is why not in the present? >> i think there is a fear now that there will be bad refugees posing as good refugees as they are to get in. it is that fear that you would get bad refugees there and be overpowered. >> there is definitely that fear. they would find individual refugees who were actually bad actors, or bad apples.

they would bring it up and try to reduce the number of refugees. i suppose what is really different about the war on terror is that the consequences of one bad refugee is fully armed and detonates herself, or himself and is quite different from one person who would be ideologically a communist. what was the threat of an individual communist in 1955? probably not much. actually, we know. the communists in north carolina, who were they? yes, the union workers. dismantled jim crow segregation. those were dangerous people. really dangerous, that's why the repressed so hard. that is interesting to make those connections. i think the similarities of differences are quite different. we will not have time to get through everything. we will keep going and continued the lecture. i want to make sure to get to the end.

what we do not get through 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. in the wake of the vietnam war and the loss -- united states lost there, the influx and importation of lots of vietnamese and cambodian refugees has a different logic.