1. Yesterday, I moderated a panel at the #HKDC2021 on U.S. immigration policy for Hong Kongers, featuring @JohnCornyn, @BrianLeungKP, @JennyYangWR, @hannahsong, and @LouisaCGreve. I said the topic at hand was of both personal and intellectual significance to me. Here’s more.
https://twitter.com/XunlingAu/status/1384230664178860032
2. Beyond my political activism — as many of you know — my Ph.D. research is on the international history of the Vietnamese boat people, with #HongKong at the center. One of the most important characters in my narrative just passed away: Walter Mondale. cnn.com/2021/04/19/pol…
3. He’s mostly remembered for championing numerous progressive ideas in the Senate and the Jimmy Carter administration, expanding the vice presidency’s powers, and picking the first female running mate ever, Geraldine Ferraro, during his own (unsuccessful) 1984 White House bid.
4. But he also had a keen interest in the refugee crisis I study. He favored accepting as many people as possible to demonstrate America’s human-rights commitment. In September 1979, he examined the conditions of a camp in British Hong Kong. I found a rare clip of the visit.
5. On the left of this picture, from a @washingtonpost story, was the legendary Governor Murray MacLehose. The two men had met in Geneva just two months earlier at an urgent conference hosted by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, with Mondale heading the U.S. delegation. 
6. MacLehose headed the Hong Kong delegation, which was remarkable because he was essentially treated as a world leader despite the colony’s semi-national status. He urged other countries to increase their quotas in exchange for making Hong Kong a “port of first asylum.”
7. Part of his savviness stemmed from his foreign-service training. He even met Deng Xiaoping separately that same year in Beijing to discuss Hong Kong’s impending 1997 problem. In fact, he’d served as the U.K. Ambassador in Saigon at the very height of the Vietnam War.
8. His judgement had domestic ramifications as well: He directly contradicted the racism of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who once said it was “quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not.” theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/30…
9. Mondale, by seeking allies like MacLehose, helped to elevate Hong Kong’s global reputation and tackle a genuine humanitarian problem. But while we used to embrace refugees, today, under Chinese rule, we’re becoming refugees ourselves. Will America do the right thing again?
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