Good news about refugees is rare, I know. The election of Joseph Cao in Louisiana is exactly that. The Republican lawyer, who came to America from Vietnam at age 8 as a refugee, defeated corrupt Democrat congressman William Jefferson last week. An article at Rightpundits reported:
Anh “Joseph” Cao, 41, was born in Saigon in 1967. He fled Vietnam in 1975 with his mother and two siblings when he was eight years old, and came to America as a refugee. His father, a soldier in the South Vietnamese army, was captured and imprisoned by North Vietnamese Communist forces.
Despite a disadvantaged childhood in a refugee community, Cao excelled in academics and went on to study at Baylor University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Physics. He then received a master’s degree in philosophy at Fordham University and considered studying to become a priest before entering law school at Loyola University, where he received a J.D. in 2000.
Since receiving his law degree, he has taught law at Loyola and practiced immigration law in the private sector. He has also served as a board member of Boat People SOS (BPSOS), a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering Vietnamese American communities.
Why have Vietnamese been such successful refugees? For one, many were from the educated classes. That’s who got persecuted the most when the communists took over in Vietnam. Also, they had enough money to get to America, money to pay bribes and hire boats. They were not the wretched of the earth, though they were put into wretched circumstances such as re-education camps.
They were grateful to come to America not because we had a good welfare system but because we were a free country where they could believe what they wanted, and a country of opportunity where they could prosper from hard work.
Maybe the refugee agencies or the State Department should hire some Vietnamese-Americans to give lessons to the new refugees.