Brian Hansford – UNHCR
Brian Hansford, Senior Public Information Officer at the UNHCR office in Washington, D.C. meets with Truyen Quang Lam in Louisville, Kentucky.
“Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants…” – The 32nd United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933–1945)
When I flew to Louisville, Kentucky at the end of last month, I packed four shirts and various travel items for a 6-day journey that would also take me and my travel companion, United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) photographer Sebastian Rich, to North Carolina. I put everything in my trusted travel bag that had served me well during my previous United Nations posting immediately before this one, which was in Afghanistan from 2010 to March 2013. It was my first visit to Louisville, as it had been the first for Truyen Quang Lam and his wife when they arrived more than three decades earlier. There the similarities end.
Quang and his wife Phuong had never heard of Louisville when they arrived on 24 January 1980. It was snowing. Like millions of other Vietnamese, Cambodian and Lao refugees who fled Southeast Asia in the late 1970s and 1980s, theirs had been a long, perilous journey. The first part had been the most dangerous. They spent five days and six nights in a 50-foot fishing boat with 146 other Vietnamese avoiding pirates and surviving rough seas that made everyone sick. Washing up in Hong Kong, they remained in a refugee camp for the next eight months. It was Quang’s first experience with UNHCR. One of his relatives helped arrange sponsorship by Catholic Charities, which in turn helped the couple get to Kentucky.
The USA resettled the most Indochinese refugees in the world, taking in more than one million, and while this crisis has long since ended the USA continues to be the number one country for global resettlement of people fleeing conflict. UNHCR’s latest Global Trends report, released 18 June, highlights the grim statistics that more than 45.2 million people were displaced by the end of 2012 – an 18-year high. According to governmental figures, 22 countries admitted 88,600 refugees for resettlement during 2012, with the USA receiving 66,300.
While Quang and his family, including one son who’s training to be a doctor and another who’s in business in Ohio, have long since settled into their lives as Americans, more recent refugees from current conflicts are just beginning their journey.
I met 13-year-old Iraqi girl, Ghadeer Sabri, who was resettled with her family in May, at a cultural orientation class three days before marking her first July 4 Independence Day in her new country. Like Quang, Ghadeer’s father echoed similar reasons as to why the family is already enjoying their new life – safety, freedom and opportunity.
Speaking with Quang in his bustling ‘Vietnam Kitchen’ restaurant that he owns in Louisville, I was wrong in thinking that there were no other similarities between our two journeys to Kentucky. Quang told me that he had also arrived with only four shirts for his trip to Louisville all those years ago, to a place his wife and children now proudly call home.
By Brian Hansford
Senior Public Information Officer
UNHCR Washington
