Guest Post: Minyao Wang, Ethel Kennedy and the “Hong Kong Parole Program” of 1962
Ethel Kennedy and the “Hong Kong Parole Program” of 1962 by Minyao Wang
I write to honor the contributions of Ethel Kennedy, who passed away last week at age 96, to U.S. immigration policy. In February 1962, Mrs. Kennedy and her husband, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, visited Hong Kong, then a British colony. They walked into a humanitarian crisis: Mao’s Communist Party had caused the worst famine in history that killed up to 45 million people. Refugees from the Canton-speaking region of China were fleeing into Hong Kong in massive numbers (people farther up north in China were unable to attempt the journey because of pervasive secret police surveillance). Mrs. Kennedy was deeply troubled by the suffering on display in Hong Kong. The crisis worsened after her return to the U.S. In mid-May 1962, the photo of a crying young Chinese refugee girl became one of the most-circulated news images in the world.
On May 23, 1962, Robert Kennedy announced the “Hong Kong Parole Program” pursuant to which Chinese refugees in Hong Kong who met specific criteria would be resettled in the United States. Between 1962 and 1965, 15,000 Chinese nationals were flown here under the Attorney General’s “parole” authority. Years ago, using a Duke University summer research grant I was able to review primary-source documents at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Suffice to say that Mrs. Kennedy’s staunch support was a key factor in the program’s adoption by the Kennedy administration. Moreover, Mrs. Kennedy leveraged her personal ties with the Congressional leadership to negate potential opposition.
To fully appreciate the significance of the Hong Kong Parole Program, we need to remember that Chinese immigration was quite limited at the time due to the “national origins” system, codified in 1924 and retained in modified form under the 1952 Act. China was assigned 105 visas annually for “quota” immigrants and was further subject to a cap of 2,000 for the entire “Asia-Pacific Triangle.” To further illustrate this point, when Congress enacted the landmark Refugee Relief Act of 1953 to provide a safe haven to victims of communism, it allocated only one percent of the 200,000 special visas to the Chinese, even though China was by then the world’s most populous communist country. According to Professor Madeline Hsu, between 1944 and 1960, only 25,000 Chinese immigrated to the United States, counting spouses and children of American citizens as well as beneficiaries of one-off dispensations.[1] Professor Hsu describes the Hong Kong Parole Program as a “rehearsal” for the abrogation of the “national origins” rule, which Congress would accomplish in the historic 1965 Immigration Act, opening the way to decades of robust Chinese (and Asian) immigration that continue to this date. I would argue that the Hong Kong Parole Program was the first intentional effort by the United States to permanently settle a large number of Chinese people.
To add a minor personal note on the transformative power of the Hong Kong Parole Program: in late 1961, one of my mother’s cousins, who was just 18 years old and fed up with the food shortage and political oppression in China, swarm to Hong Kong. Two years later, under the sponsorship of a Christian congregation in Miami, she started a new life in this country. Her arrival gave our family its first foothold in America and in due course led to the emigration of the whole extended family from China to the U.S. and Canada. For that we are grateful to Mrs. Kennedy.
In his news conference at the height of the Chinese refugee crisis, President Kennedy said “many [Chinese] people desire to leave [China]. If they could leave, I think many more would.” The President lamented that given the size of the Chinese population no country could realistically accommodate this demand in full. Six decades later, the Communist dictatorship that unleashed the refugee crisis and moved Ethel Kennedy into action remains in power. And its captive citizens still embark on risky flights to freedom. Just like in 1962, no doubt “many more would” do the same only “[i]f they could leave.”
[1] Congress in the 1950’s passed special laws to allow Chinese students, who were from wealthy families aligned with the previous Chinese government and were stranded by the Communist Revolution, to remain permanently notwithstanding the “national origins” rule.