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KIRA KAY: His crime was firing a gun in the air during a gang standoff when he was 15-years-old. He served five years, and upon release, the government ordered him deported, but didn’t act on it. He got a job and had five kids. But deportation orders never expire, and eight years later, when Dang went for a routine immigration check-in, he was detained and put on a plane to Cambodia. He says there’s a stigma to being a deportee.
CHALLY DANG: We are in our own category, because the Cambodian community look at us as foreigners who decided to come back, and those that know we were deported look at us like we are criminals that got rejected from another country so why are we back in Cambodia?
KIRA KAY: His crime was firing a gun in the air during a gang standoff when he was 15-years-old. He served five years, and upon release, the government ordered him deported, but didn’t act on it. He got a job and had five kids. But deportation orders never expire, and eight years later, when Dang went for a routine immigration check-in, he was detained and put on a plane to Cambodia. He says there’s a stigma to being a deportee.
CHALLY DANG: We are in our own category, because the Cambodian community look at us as foreigners who decided to come back, and those that know we were deported look at us like we are criminals that got rejected from another country so why are we back in Cambodia?
We have so many Hmong and Cambodian immigrants here for a reason, they were refugees and couldn't "stay home."
In the 60's and 70's the CIA funded a brutal proxy war in Laos and Cambodia to subvert the communist Pathet Lao and strike the Ho Chi Minh trail. Funding was diverted through USAID to disguise military operations from congress, and media images showed a purely "humanitarian" operation. When the war was finally lost in 75', the U.S. military has dropped over 2 million tons of explosives on 580,000 bombing missions. That's more than WW2. One third of those bombs dropped didn't explode and have been linked to up to 20,000 civilian casualties after the conflict ended. In Cambodia and Laos, hundreds of thousands of people were permanently displaced after entire villages were razed in the conflict. So that brings me to my original point, which is that many Hmong and Cambodians are displaced people with nothing to go back to.
The Hmong and Cambodian community is plagued by the same violence you'll find in any other urban communities. By deporting adults, we're perpetuating the cycle of poverty that is endemic to this group of refugees. Even the 90's, a lot of Hmong youth were already living by themselves with absentee parents in housing projects around San Francisco and Minneapolis. I would feel differently if they were simply economic migrants, but they're not.
It's unfortunate so many Americans are simply unaware of our history, and that is reflected in the idiot policy decisions many on the alt-right continue to advocate for.
"Sorry if you are here illegally, you are here illegally. Why couldn't these "refugees" come legally?"
Edit: OK I was wrong about them being here illegally. After reading the Article, I have learned these folks were legal residents. Apparently, non citizens can be deported for committing crimes. Some said they didn't know about applying for citizenship. Really? Living here for years and not knowing that you have to apply to become a citizen?
I think the morally of this story is: try to become citizen as soon as possible and fire your gun in the air afterward.
It's unfortunate so many Americans are simply unaware of our history, and that is reflected in the idiot policy decisions many on the alt-right continue to advocate for.
Everyone who has ever come to America has some type of sob story be it they are fleeing famine, war or simply looking for a better life with opportunity.
The vast majority of these displaced "dreamers" follow the rules and adapt to our society. Most people don't have a problem with immigrants who have followed the law to get into our nation and become positive influences in our society.
This is the American dream after all but this guy joined a gang and used a gun thus breaking the law and he is now paying a price for that stupidity.
Would we feel any different about this case if he hadn't shot into the air but had actually shot a rival gang banger or how about an innocent bystander or how about a Police Officer who was responding to the rumble?
He should have been sent packing when he got out of prison. I wonder if the delay was due to politics?
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