Hmong Desperate on Welfare Reform

Photo by Bert Eljera

NEW BATTLE: Hmong veterans and community leaders discuss strategy with lawyers from the Asian Law Caucus in their efforts to keep their food-stamp benefits. Pictured left to right are Yia Noei Her, Joua Yia Yang, May Lo Blonglo, Chong Neng Thao, and Yee Xiong. The Hmong contend that since they fought with U.S. forces in Laos, they should be considered U.S. veterans and thus eligible for food stamps under the new welfare reform law.

Suicides lead to a test case for welfare reform

BY BERT ELJERA

For months, Ye Vang, a 59-year-old Hmong immigrant, despaired over the possible loss of the welfare benefits that enabled her to live in relative peace since arriving in the United States in 1993.

Despite assurances by relatives that she would be taken care of should the benefits be cut, Vang felt her future was bleak. She worried that in her old age she would be a burden to her extended family.

In September, Vang hanged herself outside the Fresno home she shared with a brother, a sister-in-law, and eight nieces and nephews.

The same deep depression drove Sacramento resident Chia Yang to take her own life last month. Her son, Toby Vue, a registered nurse, pleaded with her not to worry about the loss of her welfare benefits because he would take care of her.

On Oct. 16, her husband, Su Chai Vue, woke up at 3:30 a.m. to find Yang in their garage, hanging from a nylon rope.

"The No. 1 reason she took her own life was welfare reform," Toby Vue told the Sacramento Bee last month. "[It] caused her so much stress she couldn't focus on anything else."

At least two other Asian American suicides--one in New York and one in Wisconsin--have been attributed to the loss or the threat of losing welfare benefits. Under the landmark 1996 welfare reform law, noncitizens are barred from receiving such public assistance as food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

Exempted from the ban are veterans and their families, those who have worked 10 years, and refugees and asylees in their first five years of residency in the United States.

Although SSI, a cash program for the elderly, blind, and disabled, was restored to noncitizens when the federal government approved its budget this past summer, food stamps were cut Sept. 1.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the food-stamp program, almost 27 million people across the United States received food stamps in fiscal 1995.

California Food Policy Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates for better access to food for California residents, said the food-stamp program cost the federal government $1.8 billion in 1995.

Asian Pacific Americans make up just 3.3 percent of food-stamp recipients. However, one in five of all legal immigrants, or about 280,000 people receiving food stamps are Asians and Pacific Islanders according to a study by the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium.

In California, as of March 1997, nearly 3 million people were receiving food stamps. More than 365,000 are legal immigrants and about 120,000 are expected to lose their benefits, the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) said.

The average coupon value per person as of March 1997 was $71.59, or about 79 cents per meal, according to the CDSS. This is far below the estimated $1.08 per meal required to feed a 9- to 11-year-old child and below the estimated $1.11 to provide an adult with nutritionally adequate food.

Nevertheless, the food-stamp program has been a blessing to the poor and is the single most important program to fight hunger in the United States. For many immigrants, food stamps are the main source of their sustenance.

In California, the new welfare law has a disproportionate impact on Laotians, Hmong, and Mien refugees, who constitute the highest rate of welfare dependency of all ethnic communities in the state. Estimates place welfare dependency as high as 60 percent within these communities.

About half of the 180,000 Hmong in the United States live in California. Community advocates say that since Sept. 1, as many as 20,000 Hmong refugees have lost their food-stamp benefits.

Most are like Vang and Yang, who were illiterate in their own language and too old to learn English, with virtually no chance of passing the citizenship test required for naturalization.

Recruited by the CIA to fight the North Vietnamese and rescue downed American pilots during the Vietnam War, the Hmong fled their homeland when the Americans pulled out of Laos in 1975.

They began arriving in the United States in the late 1970s and early 1980s after languishing for years in refugee camps in Thailand and other Asian countries. Trained as fighters, they have few other skills, little or no capital to start businesses, and inadequate education to compete in the job market.

They have been forced to rely on government assistance to survive in this country. The cuts, therefore, created a hysteria in the Hmong community, according Victor Hwang, staff attorney of the San Francisco-based Asian Law Caucus, which is helping the Hmong in their effort to keep their benefits.

"Some say their only useful skill was killing people," Hwang said in an interview. "Now that it's peacetime, they don't need that skill and they have nothing else."

To address the loss of food stamps, Hwang said civil-rights lawyers have filed appeals on behalf of the Hmong immigrants. At least 3,500 such appeals have been filed in Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Yuba, Alameda, Butte, San Joaquin, and Orange counties, he said.

Under the welfare reform law, recipients have 30 days to file an appeal after receiving the termination notice. During the appeal process, they are supposed to retain their benefits until their cases are finally resolved.

In their appeal, the Hmong are contending that since they fought under U.S. forces during the Vietnam War, they should be considered U.S. veterans, and are entitled to receive welfare benefits.

In addition, they say the U.S. Congress has approved language in the budget bill that sets forth its "intent" to designate those who served with American forces in Laos as veterans for the purpose of receiving welfare benefits.

However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture insists that since Congress did not provide a budget to implement its " intent," the benefit should not be extended to the Hmong and other refugees from Laos. It's an argument that the CDSS has also used to deny food stamps to Hmong veterans, despite intense lobbying by some government officials and community activists.

Earlier this month, California Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, himself a Vietnam veteran, urged CDSS Director Eloise Anderson to provide food stamps to the Hmong veterans.

"I am personally offended that the state of California should fail to acknowledge the sacrifices of fellow [Hmong] veterans and their families," Davis said in a letter to Anderson, which was made available to reporters.

He said the U.S. Congress has made it clear that Hmong and other veterans of the Vietnam conflict should not be taken off welfare. But unless Congress comes back with a clearer mandate and provides money, CDSS officials said, food stamps will continue to be denied to legal immigrants.

"Food stamps is a federal program and a change in the law should come from the federal government," said CDSS spokeswoman Corinne Chee.

In appeals hearings throughout California, Hmong immigrants have provided details of the hardships they endured during the Vietnam War. They insist that the United States has the duty and the moral obligation to take care of them.

"They feel betrayed," said Lorna Bosavanh, a field worker for the Interdenominational Refugee Ministry of Fresno, which serves the Southeast Asian communities in that city. "They came to this country thinking that the U.S. government will take care of them. Now, we're asking them to go find a job."

She said the situation is particularly hard on older immigrants, and they often say suicide is the only way out. "They said they'll die anyway, so why not end it all your own way?"

Yia Noei Her, who worked for the CIA from 1967 to 1975, said former soldiers, many of whom suffer from physical and psychological wounds from the war, are the most vulnerable.

"Many soldiers think there is nothing left for them in this country," said Her, a former bodyguard of the legendary Gen. Vang Pao, the CIA's pointman in Laos. "Either you give them the benefits or not. They don't want to suffer anymore, so they say they might as well die."

Chong Neng Thao, a former officer in the Royal Lao Army that fought the Communists, said his uncle tried to commit suicide earlier this year by drinking bleach at his home in Oroville, Calif.

But timely medical intervention saved the man's life, he said. Although among Hmongs suicide by hanging is considered the worst possible way of taking one's life, it seems to be the method of choice. Yee Xiong, spokesman of the California Statewide Lao Hmong Coalition, said that according to Hmong beliefs, the spirits of people who hanged themselves will not be reincarnated.

In the case of Yang, the Sacramento woman who hanged herself, the Sacramento Bee reported that the funeral lasted four days and 400 mourners attended the wake. Seven cows were sacrificed to the gods and Yang was dressed in seven layers of Hmong finery.

A Hmong chanter and a bamboo flute player guided her spirit back through every place she had been to until she reached the village of her birth in the mountains of Laos.

Ironically, Yang, who had twice failed her citizenship test, could have taken a third test in Hmong upon reaching age 55 under a citizenship waiver allowed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

Yang, who suffered from various ailments including a stroke and arthritis, left behind a suicide tape asking her family to forgive her for taking her own life. "It's not because you didn't love or support me," she said on the tape, which was translated to English. "My sadness over the American system and my health problems drove me over the edge."

This concern for the family left behind is also the reason why some choose hanging to commit suicide.

"If you use a gun to kill yourself, you're a bad person, " said Her, the former Hmong soldier who worked as a restaurant worker and teachers aide but has been unemployed since 1987. "If you hang yourself, you're saying, you're mad at no one, but simply angry over some issues."

Her and his family receive about $590 worth of food stamps a month, but were notified on Sept. 16 that the benefit will be stopped. He has filed an appeal.

He argues that since he is a veteran-with papers and commendations to prove it-he should continue to receive welfare benefits. He arrived in 1979 but has yet to become a U.S. citizen.

Her said he lost an uncle, a younger brother, and two sons during the war. His mother died of starvation while hiding from the Communists in the mountains.

In a commendation Her received during a May 14 ceremony in Washington, D.C., during the Lao Veterans of America Recognition Day, the text said: "We salute your receipt of the Congressionally authorized Vietnam Veterans National Medal and we confer upon you and the other Hmong and Lao combat veterans this commendation and citation, and the long overdue recognition and honor you so rightly deserve for your sacrifices on behalf of the United States, Laos and the freedom loving people of Southeast Asia."

But, Xiong, the Hmong spokes-man, said words are cheap. The U.S. government must show its appreciation to the Hmong people by maintaining their benefits.

"The Hmong treated the Americans like gods," Xiong said. "They can't understand why they are being betrayed now. They ask, 'Is the U.S. government trying to make us go back to Laos? Is it trying to starve us?'"

He said the Hmong would gladly go back to their homeland if the U.S. government dislodges the Communists who now occupy their land.

"These are people who did not volunteer to fight a war in their homeland," said Hwang of the Asian Law Caucus. "They were forced by the CIA to fight against the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces."

Joua Yia Yang, another Hmong veteran, said there was a quota for each Hmong village to provide soldiers for the paramilitary forces led by the Americans in Laos.

A 1993 book by Jane Hamilton-Meritt titled Tragic Mountains: The Hmong, the Americans and the Secret Wars for Laos, 1942-1992, detailed the secret war the U.S. waged against the North Vietnamese in Indochina.

Hamilton-Meritt, a journalist who covered the Vietnam War, paid tribute to the heroism and sacrifices of the Hmong people who fought a war not of their own making.

Aside from the appeals, Hwang and other lawyers have tackled the food-stamp issue by filing a lawsuit on Nov. 12 in Fresno County Superior Court.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Chong Yia Yang, a Hmong veteran whose food-stamp benefits for himself and his two foreign-born children were cut on Sept. 9.

In court papers, Yang argued that the CDSS violated the will of the U.S. Congress in stopping his family's food-stamp benefits. He wants the court to rule on the validity of the so-called "sense of Congress" doctrine.

In an opinion piece published by the Fresno Bee on Nov. 11, Yang said the Americans told them that if the Americans win the Vietnam War, then the Hmong people can live in peace in Laos. "On the other hand, if the Americans lost the war, then they agreed to take all the Hmong people out of Laos to live in their country, and would make sure that every Hmong would live like American citizens," he said.

Yang said he was only 14 when he was recruited by the CIA in 1971. When the Americans pulled out of Laos, he was forced to flee. "We are not yet citizens but we have every right to be in this country, as everyone does," he wrote in the English translation of his Fresno Bee commentary.

Hwang said Yang's case is an excellent test of welfare reform. He said the Hmong and other Southeast Asian veterans were unintended targets of the legislation.

"If we win on his behalf, then we can win for everybody," Hwang said. "Our strategy is first to win on food stamps and then set up a structure to respond to the other threats. Food stamps is a small part of the bigger problem."

In the end, the effort to secure status for Lao and Hmong veterans as U.S. veterans must be promoted on other fronts, including lobbying the U.S. Congress.

The Washington, D.C.-based Hmong National Development Inc. (HND) has lobbied for the adoption of the Hmong Veterans Bill, which seeks to expedite the naturalization of Hmong veterans by waiving the English-language and U.S. residency requirements.

About 16,000 Hmong veterans and their families would benefit from this bill, according to HND officials. However, the INS has said that it would set a bad precedent and would be hard to implement.

"One problem with this approach is the difficulty we would face in determining which Hmong refugees actually fought in the clandestine-organized guerrilla units" in Laos, said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the chairman of the House immigration subcommittee. "Another is that naturalization standards would be watered down."

The HND admits that's it's hard to come up with exact figures about those who fought in the war and even to ascertain identities. Some guerrillas used false names to avoid retributions from the Communists, or took the names of dead relatives to fight in their memory.

At any rate, objections by Smith and the INS are expected to de- rail passage of the bill this year, Hmong activists say.

For the families of Vang and Yang, all of these efforts are too little, too late. Lia Lee, Vang's sister-in-law, still gets emotional when she talks about the woman who helped her raise her children.

Choking back tears, she said through an interpreter in a recent interview that her kids miss Vang very much. "She was like a mother to them," she said.

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