Minnesota state Representative Kaohly Vang Her of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, speaking on the state House floor regarding modifying MinnesotaCare eligibility for illegal immigrants, revealed that she, as well as her parents, immigrated to the United States illegally, then later backtracked that admission.
During debate on the House floor Monday surrounding ending state-funding healthcare for undocumented adults in the state, Rep. Kaohly Vang Her revealed she and her parents came to the U.S. illegally — something she also claimed to have just recently fou… https://t.co/jYjNn4v4n0
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Vang Her spoke of how she was dealing with end-of-life care for her father, and in the process, discovered her immigrant status.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time with my father, who brought us all to this country at the end of the Vietnam War, and I asked my father about how we came to the United States,” she said. “And I always thought that we came here because my grandfather was a colonel in the secret war.”
The Vietnam “Secret War” was a CIA-led covert operation in Laos, a country bordering Vietnam, during the Vietnam War era, to prevent the spread of communism.
“I had thought that that meant that we had, we were in line to come to the U.S., and … my father told me that that was not true,” she continued. “Even though my parents both worked for a Christian organization, and my father actually worked at the U.S. Consulate because he was one of the few people that could speak English and he could type really fast, and apparently that was a very valued skill then.”
“So they had my father move away from the refugee camp from my mom and my sisters and I, and he went to live at the consulate where he processed all the paperwork for the refugees that came to America,” she said. “And we had missed our time to come to the U.S. three times, and if we didn’t come that last time, we would not have been able to come to the U.S. And I said, ‘Wow. What luck of ours.’ And my mom said, ‘It wasn’t luck. We did not have our names on that list to come to the U.S. because even though your grandfather worked for the CIA and because there was no like — if you were a child of somebody who worked for the CIA, the only people that had names to come to the U.S. were if you were in the direct military and you worked for the CIA, you worked for USAID.”
“We did not do either one of those,” Vang Her admitted. “My parents’ Christian organization did not count. And so what my father did was one of our uncles worked for USAID, and because his mother had died, my father, as the one processing the paperwork, put my grandmother down as his (the uncle’s) mother.”
“And so I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country,” she stated, later adding, “My family broke the law to come here. I never knew that. I just learned that now.”
Vang Her later backtracked, telling the Minnesota Reformer that she and her parents are indeed U.S. citizens, saying her parents took their citizenship test and that she became a citizen when she was in middle school. “(She) said her father technically broke the law when he filled out paperwork for the family to come to the U.S. as refugees. He did so to expedite the process to come to the U.S., though they would have come to America anyway,” the Reformer reported.
The bill in question, HF1, states, “Eligibility for MinnesotaCare is available to citizens or nationals of the United States; lawfully present noncitizens as defined in Code of Federal Regulations, title 45, section 155.20; and undocumented noncitizens.”
It was narrowly passed in the state House on Monday by a 68-65 vote, and it passed in the state Senate later in the day, 37-30.