It’s a privilege to be your student. You word “refugee” struck my heart, because I am not just a simple refugee like millions of others. I was among the Boatpeople survived, about half of a million escapees vanished in the high sea of the Pacific Oceans during the exodus (1975-1985).
Before being a refugee, I was imprisoned in the communist gulag, tortured mercilessly. And before that, I had witnessed the horror of the Vietnam War (1965-75), where four million Vietnamese died, my loving father was one of those.
Like many members of our class, I have worked and served my community for more than forty years, since 1974; I was then also a teacher.
For others, education is power or opportunity; but to me, it’s a liberation which liberated me
The book begins by discussing the historical context of the war and time period in which refugees emerge into the scene. According to Tang, “the United States publicly positioned itself as the champion of displaced Cambodians, passing the 1980 Refugee Act and casting it as a global freedom project and Cambodian refugees as needing rescue by U.S. liberalism” (15). Throughout the book, Tang discusses how the United States contributes to the constant state of captivity that refugees experience from the minute they leave home to the moment they arrive in America. The United States’ participation in the Vietnam War gave rise to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge; these conditions caused a lot of unrest and forced many people like Ra to flee or remain trapped in captivity under the Khmer Rouge. The United States’ perspective on their actions during the war do not acknowledge their contributions to the national refugee crisis. Refugees are viewed as a solution to the war in the American perspective; thus, Eric Tang introduces the concept of refugee exceptionalism: “the ideologies and discursive practices that figure refugees as necessarily in the hyperghetto but never of it” (14). Tang effectively outlines the subsequent chapters where they each address a certain way in which captivity is maintained for Ra and other refugees. In Chapter 3 that mentions the Welfare Resistance, Ra is shown to be
Should america let refugees in the us. I think that refugees should not be allowed in the usa and they should be kicked out of the us because nearly 44% of america are non english speakers that used to be18% so non english speakers are slowly over powering us americans and they will soon kick us out of our country we should kick them out and keep them out for america's sake.
Many refugees have a hard time adjusting to their new culture because they are not accepted by their peers and community. First of all, in the article “Children of War”, the author states, “Sometimes I wished I’d stayed there, watching the war, rather than being here, safe, but without
No one is prepared for war and the most challenging decisions you will have to make to survive. Although each character in Refugee, by Alan Gratz, is from a different time and place, they each share similar hardships and challenges in their experiences, such as they were all forced from their homes, they all lose a family member, and their problems begin in their own country.
Being a refugee could be an awful thing. At that moment in time it could be a bad thing but if you look on the brighter side of things, it could grow into something amazing. There are so many good things that could come out of being a refugee as well as bad.
My name is Sandra Neema Nyamuhebe, and I am a refugee from the Congo in Central Africa. I moved to Tanzania with my family when I was 3 years old to escape wars at home. While in Tanzania, we had an extremely hard time being accepted and meeting our basic needs. My parent struggled to find work and food to feed the family. So, my family applied to be sent overseas to find refuge and more opportunity through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We waited and hoped for 10 years to find a place to start a new life while living in Tanzania.
Silove D,Steel Z, Mollica R 2001. Detention of asylum seekers: assault on health, human rights, and social development. THE LANCET. VOL 357,Viewed 8 November 2014, http://wiki.straightjacketstudio.com/images/a/ab/Silove-2001-DetentionOfAsylumSeeker.pdf
‘The Happiest Refugee’ discusses various concepts including the effects of war, the trauma that refugees experience, their desire to contribute to society and our negative attitudes towards them. After the war, South Vietnamese soldiers and their families were captured by the North Vietnamese Communists and held in labour camps. Some of these prisoners were eventually released (after 1976), however, they had no right to education, employment or government supplied food rations. If Ahn had not left this oppressive environment, he would have grown up in extreme poverty and would be a very different person due to the trauma that
My single narrative on the refuguess is on my neighbor noah who is a refugee from Laos, this has been my first encounter with a refugee. he was born in a refugee camp form Vietnam and he lived in the camp for 10 years before they immigrated to the US California to be exact.
Concerned that nationality based restrictions at borders between countries in south east Europe is preventing asylum seekers from arriving at countries where they want to lodge protection claims,
Migration is a popular occurrence that happens incredibly often; much to some people's surprise. Some people believe it should be stopped while others wish to open the floodgates and let the people in. As stated by Aaron Carr, the author of Migrants And Refugees, "Over the past 30 years more than 260 million rural Chinese have moved to China's cities" (8). A large majority of them were simply looking for better opportunities with more work and decided to head to bigger and more economically developed areas, This is a perfect example of what immigration is like in other areas of the world, though on much lower scales of course. What some don't realize is that immigration and granting asylum to refugees should be supported.
An asylum seeker is defined as s person seeking international protection from persecution or conflict. Furthermore, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention on the Status of Refugees, a refugee is an asylum seeker who has been approved. Contrastingly, the United Nations classifies refugees as those who flee from persecution regardless if approved or not. There is another group of migrants called economic migrants who are people who leave their country motivated by economic game. These definitions of different refugees and views of migrants are essential to understanding the crisis facing Europe today with an increased influx of immigrants into Europe. Europe has usually been the source of emigrants as opposed to immigrants, but currently refugees from mainly Middle Eastern regions have been flooding various European nations, specifically Greece and Italy because of their location on the Mediterranean. The political disturbances taking place in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia have fueled the migration trends seen recently. In the first few months of 2015, an estimated 464,000 migrants have crossed into Europe specifically by sea (Council of Incoming Foreigners). Action was taken with the establishment of the Dublin Regulation which establishes that asylum seekers must remain in the first country they enter and that country must take the responsibility of controlling and assessing the incoming foreigners. However, in reality many immigrants continue to travel on into
I am a refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Thirteen years ago, I fled my country due to the war and I never went back. A Thursday evening, I heard gunshots outside my gate and I ran to see what was going on. People in the street were running back to their houses and stores were closing. Nothing was unusual because growing up, the sound of gunshots was like hearing fireworks for special occasions. There would be shooting and my family would either fled to the neighboring country for a night but then I would to school the next day. I starting running and I experience the life at a refugee camp for the first time when I was five years old, separated from my parents. However, in 2004, my tribe was targeted and we were hunted and been killed. The next day, my parents started calling our family members around to say goodbye. As I was hiding under the bed with my sisters, we held hands and started praying, asking God to welcome us in Heaven, I remember hearing shootings in front of our gate. Three men had come to rescue us but one was shot and died. My family and I were able to escape at the loss of one’s life. Ever since that night, my life found purpose. Someone had given up his life so that I can survive. I then knew that God had spared my life to help others. Moreover, that became my life’s purpose.
I am not a refugee. I am a white, middle-class, female American. I am a student at a public high school in the suburbs. My country is not being torn apart by genocide. My parents haven’t been killed. My government does not rape me. My family does not live in a tent in the middle of the desert. My community does not get by on a $1.00 per week for food, but my desires and passions connect to those who do.
“With 1 human in every 113 affected, forced displacement hits record, …24 per min” (UNHCR, 2016). According to United Nations, "A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group" (UNHCR-US, n. d.). Statistics of UNHCR in 2015 shows 21.3 million refugees worldwide. Also, 3.2 million asylum-seekers and 40.8 million internally displaced people (IDP) are supported by United Nations in 125 countries. These higher numbers comparing to 2014 are due to the global rise of conflicts and war, and lower support of affected individuals by their governments. The shocking number belongs to children who constitute 51 percent of the refugee population, and 98,400 asylum-seeker children who are either separated from their parents or unaccompanied (UNHCR-CA, 2016).