The Moua household arrived in the chilly April of 1976 at the Eau Claire, Wisconsin airport. They have been unprepared for the climate however greeted by the nice and cozy welcome of the pastors sponsoring their keep in america. It was one 12 months after the top of the Vietnam Warfare that compelled them to flee their nation.
“They’d little or no,” Mary Schoenknecht mentioned. “Even the little ones didn’t have any sneakers,”
Schoenknecht works to maintain data at Trinity Lutheran Church in Eau Claire. The church sponsored the primary few Hmong households that got here to Eau Claire. First the Moua household, and two years later the Vue household.
Freeman Vue was 17 when he landed right here in 1978. He’s lived in Eau Claire ever since – like most of his household. The Pastors Andy Bow and Jack Olson picked them up the identical as the primary household the place they took the photographs stored at the Trinity Lutheran library to today.
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“My dad was in The Secret Warfare and in Vietnam between the north and south,” Vue mentioned. “The Individuals have been serving to conceal the Laos individuals, carrying weapons and sending troopers to the south. My dad was a soldier at that point and he was killed.”
Their father’s loss of life left a huge effect on their household as they moved to flee the repercussions of one among their household siding with the US in The Secret Warfare, a CIA covert operation in Laos centered on slicing off provides to communist forces in Vietnam.
“The Individuals promised if we helped them and we couldn’t keep in Laos, they’d assist us, and all of the communists have been torturing the Hmong troopers serving to the Individuals,” Vue mentioned. “We escaped from Laos to Thailand, stayed there for a pair years after which the Individuals discovered sponsors.”
When American forces withdrew from Laos in 1975 leaving hundreds working to Thailand refugee camps, Hmong households began arriving in the US as refugees. As we speak, about 4.5% of the worldwide Hmong inhabitants lives in the US, with just a little over 3,000 in the City of Eau Claire.
Freeman Vue doesn’t bear in mind the main points of his household’s story particularly. Their household passes down the story of their journey to Eau Claire, however since Jan. 20, 2025, tales like that haven’t been taking place.
An govt order Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program signed by President Donald Trump has halted all influx of refugees since Jan. 20, 2025.
The order reads, “The US lacks the power to soak up giant numbers of migrants, and in explicit, refugees, into its communities in a way that doesn’t compromise the supply of assets for Individuals, that protects their security and safety, and that ensures the suitable assimilation of refugees.”
The act canceled the flights of 22,000 refugees who had been beforehand authorized based on revealed State Division statistics launched by CBS Information on January 28, 2025. That features flights that have been certain for Eau Claire, sponsored by World Reduction.
World Relief Wisconsin is a Christian non-profit group with an workplace downtown. Not too long ago opened in the direction of the top of 2023, the Chippewa Valley growth of the Christian nonprofit group was a continuation of the Wisconsin department of nationwide networks that has helped place over 400,000 refugees in the US.
The chief order additionally issued a cease work order, which implies that below the federal reception and placement program, resettlement companies are not in a position to serve or present assets with federal funding. Gail Cornelius, regional director for World Reduction Wisconsin, mentioned it’s a irritating state of affairs.
“That’s additionally for refugees which have already arrived in our neighborhood,” Cornelius mentioned. “And that’s difficult as a result of it implies that we have now people that we’re working with, that we have now welcomed, that we’re not in a position to serve below that very same grant.”
Professor Kati Barahona-Lopez works at UW-Eau Claire in the Latin American studies and sociology packages. She mentioned, that in the context of refugees in america, it’s essential to recollect the historic affect govt orders have had on immigration in normal.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943 – just some a long time earlier than Hmong individuals got here to the US. The act banned Chinese language individuals from getting into the US, and plenty of Asian individuals confronted societal exclusion in consequence.
“Just some years earlier than it occurred the Hmong resettlement packages in america wouldn’t have been in a position to occur,” Barahona-Lopez mentioned. “Of us from the Hmong neighborhood are such an integral a part of Eau Claire, and that is residence for them now.“
The chief order defunding refugee packages and refusing refugee entry into the nation is a delivered-on promise that President Trump emphasised on the marketing campaign path in Wisconsin the place immigration was ranked the second most essential concern to Wisconsin voters by a Marquette University poll.
“I’ll liberate Wisconsin from this mass migrant invasion,” Trump mentioned in a marketing campaign speech at Prairie Du Chien on Sept. 28, 2024. “Each state is a border state.”
It’s a sentiment shared by the individuals who protested the opening of World Reduction in September. Fred Kappus from the Eau Claire Republican Occasion was at these protests and holds issues in regards to the outcomes of refugee settlement in Willmar, Minnesota being repeated right here in Eau Claire.
“Willmar, Minnesota is my mom’s hometown, and I nonetheless have relations who dwell in the Willmar space,” Kappus mentioned. “One among my cousins mentioned that Willmar is a metropolis of roughly 22,000 individuals, and 20% of the inhabitants now are Somalis.”
Regardless of holding a inhabitants that’s one third non-white in 2019, tensions round growing numbers of Somalian refugees getting into Willmar stored rising. It led to members of the Kandiyohi County board voting to cease this system however they feared accusations of racism from the neighborhood.
“They don’t assimilate in any way,” Kappus mentioned. “It’s created all types of issues, social and financial issues in Wilmer, resulting from their non-assimilation.”
Involved residents like Kappus who protested World Reduction in Eau Claire launched an announcement speaking about their important points with the opening of the workplace. Amongst them have been lack of transparency, lack of public enter and impacts on housing in Eau Claire.
Housing in Eau Claire is a strained matter with Western Dairyland publishing that, from January to July 2024, the whole unhoused inhabitants elevated to 104 individuals in the Eau Claire space, however Lisa Leazott from the Community Haven House mentioned to the Spectator final winter that she estimates that quantity might need tripled since then.
“Shouldn’t we be caring for homeless Americans earlier than we import individuals from the opposite aspect of the world after which should handle them too?” Kappus mentioned.
Professor Barahona-Lopez mentioned the hyperlink between homeless individuals and refugee packages is unintentional.
“From a sociological perspective the methods in which these narratives about immigration and housing and other people’s wants. All of them get linked collectively,” Barahona-Lopez mentioned. “It’s attention-grabbing as a result of lots of instances we predict we’re making coverage on one concern, after which we notice that it’s truly very interconnected with all these different points.”
The refugees in Eau Claire settled by World Reduction are usually not simply supported by public packages and funding, but in addition spiritual organizations and volunteers known as ‘Good Neighbor Groups’ from space church buildings – together with Trinity Lutheran.
“It’s form of a three-prong strategy to our funding,” Cornelius mentioned. “We now have federal funding, we have now state grant funding, after which we work with what we name regionally raised funds however basically non-public and basis and church funding.”
World Reduction has been supported by church buildings, particular person donors, in addition to federal grants from the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID) and different companies. Beneath the administration of President Trump USAID has misplaced funding and staffing despite efforts of the Supreme Court.
With the manager order to cease work enabled, Good Neighbor groups in Eau Claire nonetheless present assist to refugee households. Madeline Kelley with The Haven, a church in Eau Claire, has been on an excellent neighbor staff for the previous few months serving to a refugee household.
“It’s simply ensuring they’ve all of the issues they want: cleansing provides, sheets, toys, issues like that,” Kelley mentioned. “Generally with different households, it’s a communal assist like making meals for them or serving to discover a automobile for them – filling out job purposes. Simply lots of every day issues.”
Kelley wasn’t affiliated with World Reduction when protesters have been in opposition to the workplace opening. She mentioned she remembered seeing the protests and being confused.
“I bear in mind considering that is ridiculous,” Kelley mentioned. “I’m positive the people who find themselves protesting are misinformed or uninformed – that was my view earlier than I used to be in this system – and now I believe persons are extremely uninformed as they nonetheless have opposition to this system.”
It has been fifty years because the finish of the Secret Warfare that drove Hmong households as refugees to Eau Claire sponsored by Trinity Lutheran. Since then the Moua and Vue households have left a thumbprint on the realm.
Decide Sophia Vue turned the first Hmong Minnesota judge after graduating from Memorial Excessive College in 1990 as homecoming queen. Charles Vue retired in 2022 from UW-Eau Claire after working at the Workplace of Multicultural Affairs and serving to plant seeds for what’s now the Critical Hmong Studies program.
Kappus, who protested the World Reduction workplace, believes the Hmong refugees have since turn out to be pillars in Eau Claire.
“They’re productive members of our neighborhood,” Kappus mentioned. “And that was a really totally different state of affairs than it’s now, I consider. They’re absolutely invested all through the neighborhood”
With Trinity Lutheran nonetheless supporting Good Neighbor Teams with World Reduction, Schoenknecht likes to maintain the images recording how the primary Hmong households got here to the Chippewa Valley.
A few of the photographs are labeled with enjoyable details in regards to the kids. It’s much like how Good Neighbor groups will obtain details about the households they assist at the moment.
Schoenknecht can also be buddies with the pastors who spearheaded the Hmong sponsorship and members of the Vue household. They attempt to join formally each couple of weeks, however Schoenknecht and Freeman Vue run into one another at the YMCA downtown usually.
“I can let you know it’s not been straightforward for them as a result of we’re not a various neighborhood,” Schoeknecht mentioned, “however they create a richness to Eau Claire.”
Eau Claire holds a number of occasions that honor Hmong tradition all year long. New 12 months’s, HmongFest, and Tradition Fest are just some. Freeman Vue talked about that the Hmong Institute in Wisconsin is holding a fiftieth Anniversary Banquet in Madison this summer season.
“Fifty years is a very long time,” Professor Barahona-Lopez mentioned. “it makes me marvel how many people take into consideration the historic components that formed Hmong people coming to Eau Claire. I take into consideration how little we bear in mind these historic occasions that basically push individuals emigrate.”
World Reduction Wisconsin intends to function regardless of the manager order handed on Jan. 20. They proceed to depend on neighborhood volunteers to assist the refugees at present settled in Eau Claire.
Pawlisch might be reached at [email protected].