As Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees, and International Law, Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman steered the 1980 Refugee Act through the House of Representatives, partnering with Senator Ted Kennedy to drive the bill to final passage. The landmark legislation fundamentally reshaped American immigration law, allowing the United States to welcome more than three million refugees in the decades since.
We spoke with Congresswoman Holtzman about her family’s story of seeking refuge, the importance of admitting refugees, and why she believes that dismantling the refugee program is a betrayal of American values.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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Alexia Gardner, Policy Analyst at USCRI: While preparing to speak with you, I was struck by your own family’s history as refugees. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
Congresswoman Holtzman: My grandfather and his family fled the persecution of Jews in the early 1900s Ukraine. Because they lived on a street that was not part of the Jewish section, Jews fled to his house seeking refuge. And he gave them refuge, even though it could have cost him and his family their lives. That happened several times.
So they were living in fear of death from the pogroms [violent riots aimed at killing and harming Jews].
One day, my mother was stopped on the way back from school by a soldier with a rifle. And the soldier believed she was Jewish. Pointing his rifle at her, he asked her to say a word in Russian that had a lot of R’s in it, and ended in R. Many Jews would pronounce the R in a German way or a French way—the guttural ‘R’—as opposed to a rolled ‘R’, which is what a Russian ‘R’ is. And my mother’s life depended on how she pronounced this word that he told her to say. Well, luckily, she knew how to pronounce it [the Russian way]. He told her to get the hell out of there. He didn’t shoot her, but he could have killed her.
So that was one thing they were fleeing. And then, when the Communist government took over…they threw my mother out of school because she was the daughter of a member of the bourgeoisie. My grandfather had a small store that sold woolen goods. It wasn’t industrial, it wasn’t for rich people, but he had a modest income and he had a business…My grandfather said, “What future do we have here? We’re going to be either killed by the pogroms, and if we stay, what future will we have if my children can’t get an education?” So they fled to America.
Alexia: And how did this story shape your own career, in terms of your being so involved with the 1980 Refugee Act?
Congresswoman Holtzman: My mom told us her family’s story all the time. She told us how fragile life was, that this kind of thing could happen anywhere, anytime, to anybody. Her family had always been good citizens, law-abiding, but they were the “wrong” religion and the “wrong” economic background.
It wasn’t just my family who fled. My grandfather also organized an escape of about 54 people. They took open wagons to the Romanian border…I think the important thing about their story is that anybody could become a refugee. Even though you feel that you have a settled life, you have a business…they had roots… that go back, as far as we can count in the census, to the 1790s in this place, in their town. But still, they had to pick themselves up and go. They didn’t want to, but they had to.
Alexia: That really resonates with me. What this work, and this moment in history, has shown me is that none of us are entirely immune from the possibility of exile. The desire to migrate when you feel unsafe is fundamental. It is what humans have done throughout history.
Congresswoman Holtzman: And we also know from our own [national] history what role refugees played in the growth of this country. Where would we be without them? … The United States never would have been able to make the scientific advances it did [during World War II] without refugees from Italy, from Germany, from France, and so forth. Refugees have contributed enormously to America. They truly have.
Alexia: Cut forward to the 1980 Refugee Act, which is the first significant piece of legislation that recognized how important refugees are to America. What sparked the conversations that led to passing the legislation?
Congresswoman Holtzman: Okay. Well, first of all, Senator Ted Kennedy played a critical role here. You cannot underestimate that. I think he had been trying for several years to reform U.S. refugee law.
When the Vietnamese refugee crisis came up, I went to Southeast Asia. I must have gone at least four or five times…when the North Vietnamese government took over in Vietnam, those who had worked with [the United States] were at risk of suffering some kind of penalty. They were being sent to re-education centers, they were imprisoned…And then the Vietnamese government also tried to expel people of Chinese origin.
As such, there were many people in Southeast Asia, who, through no fault of their own… were in trouble. They were being persecuted or actually expelled. And the numbers were huge.
You saw them in the refugee camps, and what they wanted simply was to escape persecution and to lead a good life and a positive life. I saw the plight of children: Cambodian children [survivors of Khmer Rogue atrocities] whose parents had been shot in front of them. I mean, it was horrifying…
And we—the United States—had played such a central role in the events in Southeast Asia, Americans understood that we had some responsibility for the refugee problem. Some responsibility to deal with it. The United States also took a leadership role in getting other countries in the region not to throw the refugees out to sea. I did some of that work too. I talked to some of the government officials involved in Malaysia and Indonesia and Thailand, begging them not to push the refugees who fled in boats to their shores back out to sea to their deaths.
So I think what happened was that Senator Kennedy and I realized that we needed a real framework for the admission of refugees. First, to announce that the admission of refugees was an important policy that the United States endorsed, espoused, and believed in. That was key. And then also a method to ensure their admission and effective resettlement here.
Alexia: More than 3 million refugees are here today because of the 1980 Refugee Act. The legislation you and Senator Kennedy spearheaded has meant so much to so many people. It has been devastating to see what has happened to the program over the past year.
Congresswomen Holtzman: And it seems so incredible [now] that the admission of the Vietnamese ‘boat people’…was not controversial. It won without a single objection in the United States Senate. Can you imagine that today, any immigration effort without objection by anybody in the U.S. Senate? That’s because we didn’t have people whipping up this anti-immigration idea, anti-immigrant idea, that somehow immigrants will taint our blood…
But I think the experience with the Refugee Act shows that basically—even though in the House there was opposition to some of the legislation because it didn’t give Congress enough of a say—I can’t think of anybody opposed the idea that the admission of refugees was essential to the well-being and the prosperity of the United States of America. That was not a controversial proposition.
I think there were questions about how many we could absorb and how many we could absorb efficiently and effectively, and that was the other important thing about the Refugee Act. It created a statutory framework for resettlement to make sure that the refugees would be absorbed quickly and become productive, taxpaying citizens as quickly as possible. That hadn’t existed before. It was totally laissez-faire, totally ad hoc. And then we created a formal mechanism so that there was a structured effort to ensure that the refugees who were admitted were quickly welcomed. They were screened abroad, they were quickly welcomed, and then there were efforts to get them fluent in English, get jobs, and start paying taxes.
Alexia: In terms of looking forward, do you think there is any hope to rebuild the refugee program?
Congresswoman Holtzman: Yes, of course there is, once we get past the mania, the obsession with the fear of foreigners, which is completely generated by propaganda—false propaganda.
I mean, stop and think about it. We need immigrants for a lot of reasons. We need their energy. They’re giving something up for a future: an idea of freedom, of prosperity, of opportunity. They’re bringing those concepts and they’re bringing energy and they’re bringing their work ethic and they’re bringing taxes and contributions to our revenue stream. We need new generations to support our Social Security system, otherwise, we’re going to run out of money in that system.
We are already experiencing the problem of labor deficiencies because we don’t have immigrant labor to do the work. We have serious problems with the production of food now. We will have other serious problems because of the failure to welcome people. We need their spirit and as a compassionate nation we need to reach out a hand to victims of persecution and provide a home.
Alexia: What do you see as the legacy of the Act today, especially as it’s under such attack?
Congresswoman Holtzman: Well, I think the most important thing is to point out to Americans how much refugees have contributed, how much foreigners have contributed, how much the ideas of foreigners have contributed. Not just to us, but to the world. The idea of democracy wasn’t born on our shores.
So I think, first of all, we have to undo the lies. We have to undo the lies and tell the positive story. And then show people: we had around a million people coming from Vietnam. Did our country suffer as a result? We’ve had at least three million people arrive under the Refugee Act in this country. What harm did they cause?
And now look at what’s happened with our economy because of the effort to keep foreigners out, as well as the tariffs—also a hostile act against foreigners. I mean, the idea that we can build a wall around the United States and it’s going to make us a great country, greater than we are now, is just nonsense.
If we’re not willing to accept new ideas, if we’re not willing to welcome new people, if we’re not willing to grow in that way, I don’t know what the future of this country will be. Anyway, I don’t think you can keep [new ideas, new people] out. I think it’s a futile effort to do that. I think it’s ridiculous…
Most refugees come here and they start working right away. Most refugees come here, they get jobs and they become productive citizens. They pay taxes. They help this country grow economically. We need them. We really do.
