The Test of Civilization

Checking in with the lovely Madelyn Simone this week, I asked how fourth grade was going. “Good,” she replied. “Do you have a best friend this year?” Madelyn: “Yes,” and she told me the name of the girl in her class who recently moved to the United States from Vietnam. 

Her teacher told Madelyn’s parents how helpful our granddaughter is to the young girl, as she attempts to navigate a new language, a new classroom experience, and a new country. Sitting with her at lunch, playing together at recess, and communicating, even without shared words, Madelyn has welcomed her new BFF with open arms.

I’m old enough to remember Vietnam. A family friend was killed there. I wore a POW/MIA bracelet with the name of Major John Held engraved upon it. A teacher in my school emigrated to Canada rather than serve in the war. Even from a fourth-grade perspective, it was a difficult time.

I also remember the images: Nick Ut’s photograph of nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, known as the Napalm Girl; planes taking off in Babylift, airlifting three thousand babies and children, mostly orphans, out of country as Saigon fell in 1975; the images of boat people, an estimated 800,000 who faced the dangers of the South China Sea in search of refuge. These boat people, as well as other escapees, lived indefinitely in teeming refugee camps 

What I didn’t know was that in 1979, Vice President Walter Mondale took the lead in developing a world-wide response to the Vietnamese refugee crisis. In a U.N. speech, Mondale pointed to the Evian Conference in 1938, where delegates from thirty-two countries met to discuss the refugee crisis in the years leading up to World War II. While speaker after speaker expressed sympathy for the Jews who were attempting to escape Germany, “most countries, including the United States and Britain, offered excuses for not letting in more refugees” (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). Mondale confessed: “The civilized world hid in the cloak of legalisms, and the result was the Holocaust.” By their inaction, they “failed the test of civilization.” Capturing his audience’s attention, Mondale outlined what he saw as a world problem, and as Dan Olsen reported, “exhorted them to fashion a world solution.”

In that response, the U.S. proposed doubling the number of southeast Asian refugees to the U.S., welcoming 14,000 people each month to resettlement opportunities across the country. In stark contrast, Washington this week announced the refugee cap for 2019-2020 will be 18,000 people – per year. In 2015-16, this number was 110,000.

The Pew Research Center notes that this reduction in refugee admissions comes when the number of refugees worldwide has reached the highest levels since World War II. The United Nation’s refugee agency report, “the global population of forcibly displaced increased by 2.3 million people in 2018. By the end of the year, almost 70.8 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said more than half of the 2018 refugees were children. More than half. Children. 

Immigration is complicated, emotionally fraught and politically divisive today, but it was complicated, emotionally fraught and politically divisive as Germans begged for asylum in 1938, and as Mondale spoke to the challenges of South-Asian refugees in 1979. In 1938, world leaders “failed the test of civilization.” In 1979, they were urged to do better – and did.

In 1979, James and Shirley Clifton had only met Thu-Hoang Ha’s father when the Vietnamese student came to Christmas dinner, but agreed to sign an affidavit of support, taking financial responsibility for his wife and daughter so they could escape Vietnam and enter the U.S. Ha writes: “It’s worth remembering that decades ago, despite widespread public opposition and xenophobia, a country opened its doors to those seeking safe, dry land. And they, in turn, left a lasting mark on a new home.” 

Mondale’s words are but a faint echo today, yet Madelyn’s actions remind me of the phrase from Isaiah: “. . . and a little child shall lead them.” The question of 1938 still reverberates: Is there truly no room for those seeking refuge?