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Q. Were there any U.S. soldiers who claimed their children that they had with Vietnamese women in the Vietnam War? What happened to the ones that were left behind?A. Multiple articles regarding Amerasians treatment after the war, what led to the American Homecoming Act of 1987, and a look back 25 years later.40 years after the Vietnam war ended, the children of U.S. soldiers are looking for their dads.Legacies of warForty years after the fall of Saigon, soldiers’ children are still left behindPhotos by Linda DavidsonStories by Annie Gowen, Published: April 17, 2015Vo Huu Nhan was in his vegetable boat in the floating markets of the Mekong Delta when his phone rang. The caller from the United States had stunning news — a DNA database had linked him with a Vietnam vet believed to be his father.Nhan, 46, had known his father was an American soldier named Bob, but little else.“I was crying,” Nhan recalled recently. “I had lost my father for 40 years, and now I finally had gotten together with him.”But the journey toward their reconciliation has not been easy. News of the positive DNA test set in motion a chain of events involving two families 8,700 miles apart that is still unfolding and has been complicated by the illness of the veteran, Robert Thedford Jr., a retired deputy sheriff in Texas.When the last U.S. military personnel fled Saigon on April 29 and 30, 1975, they left behind a country scarred by war, a people uncertain about their future and thousands of their own children. These children — some half-black, some half-white — came from liaisons with bar girls, “hooch” maids, laundry workers and the laborers who filled sandbags that protected American bases.They are approaching middle age with stories as complicated as the two countries that gave them life. Growing up with the face of the enemy, they were spat on, ridiculed, beaten. They were abandoned, given away to relatives or sold as cheap labor. The families that kept them often had to hide them or shear off their telltale blond or curly locks. Some were sent to reeducation or work camps, or ended up homeless and living on the streets.They were called “bui doi,” which means “the dust of life.”Forty years later, hundreds remain in Vietnam, too poor or without proof to qualify for the program created by the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987 that resettles the children of American soldiers in the United States.Now, an Amerasian group has launched a last-chance effort to reunite fathers and children with a new DNA database on a family heritage Web site. Those left behind have scant information about their GI dads — papers and photographs were burned as the Communist regime took hold, and memories faded. So positive DNA tests are their only hope.New season, fresh hopesMotorcycles and scooters crowd the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)Ho Chi Minh City in spring. The apricot flower trees, symbol of the spring festival of Tet, are in bloom. A never-ending parade of motorbikes swirls around traffic circles. High-end stores such as Gucci sparkle near chain restaurants such as KFC. There’s scant evidence of the U.S. military presence, save for a rusting helicopter in the yard of a museum devoted to communist glory.But family secrets are buried like land mines.Trista Goldberg, 44, is a Pilates instructor from New Jersey, proud to call herself Amerasian, and founder of a group called Operation Reunite. She was adopted by a U.S. family in 1974 and found her birth mother in 2001. Two springs ago, she arrived at a house in Ho Chi Minh City where 80 people had gathered to provide DNA samples. She hopes to use potential matches to help make the case for about 400 whose applications for U.S. visas are pending further verification.“With a twist of fate, I could have been one of the ones who stayed back,” she said.Operation Reunite Returns Amerasians to VietnamMore than 3,000 Vietnamese orphans were evacuated from Vietnam in the chaotic final days of war. The lives of the rest changed with the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, which allowed 21,000 Amerasians and more than 55,000 family members to settle in the United States.The “dust of life” suddenly became “gold children.” Rich Vietnamese paid to buy Amerasians, only to abandon them once they arrived in the United States, according to the former U.S. Marine and child psychiatrist Robert S. McKelvey, who wrote “The Dust of Life: America’s Children Abandoned in Vietnam.”In part because of such fraud, the United States tightened its screening procedures, and the number of immigrant visas issued dropped dramatically. Only 13 were issued last year.Nhan had traveled from his home in An Giang for Goldberg’s DNA collection session. He is a quiet man, a father of five with a third-grade education, a wide smile and ears that stick out slightly.His mother had told him he was the son of a soldier when he was about 10.“Why do kids tease me all the time? I get so upset, sometimes I want to hit them, ” Nhan recalled saying. “She paused for a while and told me I was a mixed kid. She looked sad, but my grandparents said they loved me the same. It didn’t matter.”After Nhan and the others gave DNA samples, they settled back to see whether this new technology would give them a chance at the old American dream.Making contactTop: Vo Huu Nhan, an Amerasian born to a Vietnamese mother and an American G.I. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)Bottom: Old photos of Bob Thedford as an officer in the Army during the late '60s. (Photo courtesy Vo Huu Nhan)In the fall, Bob Thedford’s wife, Louise, a genealogy buff, logged on to her account with Family Tree DNA, which is cooperating with Goldberg’s effort, and saw a surprising result. It was new information for her husband, a father-son link. The son was Nhan.Louise had long suspected that her husband might have had a child from his days as a military police officer in Vietnam in the late 1960s. She had found a picture of a Vietnamese woman tucked inside his wallet shortly after they wed.The news was more of a shock to their daughter, Amanda Hazel, 35, a paralegal from Fort Worth.“To be honest, the first thing I thought was, ‘Are you sure this isn’t a scam?’ ” Hazel recalled.But pictures of Nhan arrived a short time later. He was the image of his late grandfather, Robert Thedford Sr., a Navy veteran who had fought in World War II. “You look so much like your grandfather PawPaw Bob,” Bob told his son.Thedford, a strapping Tarrant County deputy sheriff known as “Red” for his auburn hair, had met Nhan’s mother while he was at Qui Nhon Air Base. His memories of her are hazy, and his family said he rarely spoke of the war.“He would never sit down and lament on it,” his stepson, John Gaines, recalled. “When I asked him, ‘Did you ever shoot someone?’ he said, ‘Yes, but you have to understand there are reasons behind that, and it’s part of war. I’m not going to sit here and explain to you what that’s like.’”As Thedford was teaching Hazel to swim and ride a bike in suburban Texas, Nhan was growing up on his grandparents’ pig farm, swimming in the river and getting caught stealing mangoes. The disparity in their lives was not lost on Thedford.“He just kept saying, ‘I didn’t know,’ ” Gaines said. “ ‘I didn’t know how to be there, or I would have been there. All I can tell you is I was surprised, and I hate finding out 45 years later.’ ”Tentative contacts followed, although Nhan speaks no English and does not have a computer. E-mails were exchanged through intermediaries, packages followed. Nhan sent sandals he had made and conical paddy hats; the Thedfords sent Nhan a $50 bill and Texas Rangers gear. “Is there anything you need?” Robert Thedford kept asking.Then there was the emotional first Skype call, when both men cried seeing each other for the first time.“He looked like me,” Nhan said after. “I felt like I connected with him right away.”But last August, Thedford, 67, who had previously been treated for skin cancer, fell ill again. The cancer had spread, and he had a series of operations, the most recent on April 3. As the Texas family rallied to care for him, Vietnam receded.‘My son in Vietnam’Dang Thi Kim Ngan, right, interprets for Vo Huu Nhan, center, as he Skypes with his half-sister Amanda Hazel. (Photo by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)Recently, Nhan Skyped with Hazel from a dusty computer in the back of a friend’s sewing supply shop in Ho Chi Minh City. She spoke from her living room, her dogs running about.Nhan asked how his father was doing.“He’s doing good. He can sit up in a chair now. They’re working with him,” Hazel said. “I feel bad not connecting sooner, but Mom and Dad think about you and talk about you all the time.” Thedford had been showing pictures of Nhan to the nurses in the hospital and saying, “This is my son in Vietnam.”Nhan submitted the results of his DNA match to the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City in December 2013, asking for a reconsideration. But he has not heard back. A State Department spokesman said that privacy laws prevent discussion of any case.Hazel says that the family is all for helping Nhan immigrate to the United States, even as she knows that the transition would be difficult. “It’s going to totally throw him for a loop,” she said.But for now, theirs is a story without an end, the way the war itself is a wound that never completely healed. The story keeps spiraling forward, like the DNA double helix that brought them together.Nga Ly Hien Nguyen in Vietnam and Magda Jean-Louis and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.Amerasians in Saigon 1985 & 1987 including Kim NguyenJim LauriePublished on Feb 1, 2016Amerasian children were a fixture on the streets of Saigon from 1980 to 1987. Most had a very hard time; no parents and they were regarded as outcasts in society. Finally by 1988-1990, the US and Vietnamese governments agreed to allow nearly all to settle in the United States. Under the American Homecoming Act of 1988, about 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives entered the United States. These are excerpts of video shot in 1985 and 1987.Vietnam: A Tale of 'Miss Saigon,' Two Kims, Children of Dust and More Than 30 Years (huffingtonpost.com)Vietnam Legacy: Finding G.I. Fathers, and Children Left Behind (2013)SALTILLO, Miss. — Soon after he departed Vietnam in 1970, Specialist James Copeland received a letter from his Vietnamese girlfriend. She was pregnant, she wrote, and he was the father.He re-enlisted, hoping to be sent back. But the Army was drawing down and kept him stateside. By the time Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975, he had lost touch with the woman. He got a job at a plastics factory in northern Mississippi and raised a family. But a hard question lingered: did she really have his child?“A lot of things we did in Vietnam I could put out of my mind,” said Mr. Copeland, 67. “But I couldn’t put that out.”In 2011, Mr. Copeland decided to find the answer, acknowledging what many other veterans have denied, kept secret or tried to forget: that they left children behind in Vietnam.Their stories are a forgotten legacy of a distant war. Yet for many veterans and their half-Vietnamese children, the need to find one another has become more urgent than ever. The veterans are hitting their mid-60s and early 70s, many of them retired or infirm and longing to salve the scars of an old war. And for many of the offspring, who have overcome at least some of the hurdles of immigration, the hunger to know their American roots has only grown stronger.“I need to know where I come from,” said Trinh Tran, 46, a real estate agent in Houston who has searched in vain for her G.I. father. “I always feel that without him, I don’t exist.”By some estimates, tens of thousands of American servicemen fathered children with Vietnamese women during that long war. Some of the children were a result of long-term relationships that would be unimaginable to the veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where interaction with local people was minimal. Others were born of one-night stands. But few of the fathers ever met their offspring, and fewer still brought them home to America.After the war, those children — known as Amerasians — endured harsh discrimination and abject poverty in Vietnam, viewed as ugly reminders of an invading army. Shamed by reports of their horrible living conditions, Congress enacted legislation in 1987 giving Amerasians special immigration status. Since then, more than 21,000, accompanied by more than 55,000 relatives, have moved to the United States under the program, and several thousand more have come under other immigration policies.Many arrived expecting to be reunited with their American fathers. But the United States government did not help in that cause, and only a tiny fraction — perhaps fewer than 5 percent — ever found them.So many Amerasians continue to search, typically working with little more than badly translated names, half-forgotten memories and faded photographs.And some veterans are doing the same, driven by heartache, or guilt, to find sons and daughters. “It’s like the mother who gives up their kid for adoption,” said George Pettitt of Wales Center, N.Y. “You just never stop thinking about it.”Mr. Pettitt, 63, enlisted in the Army after dropping out of high school and was in Vietnam by age 19. During his year there, he developed a relationship with a Vietnamese woman who did laundry for soldiers. Soon she was pregnant.“I was taking comfort in having a girlfriend like that,” he said. “I never meant for her to get pregnant.”He returned home to western New York, lost touch with the woman, got a job driving trucks and raised a family. But when he retired for health reasons in 2000, he found himself haunted by memories of the child he left behind — a boy, he believes. He paid a man to look in Vietnam, but the trail went cold. This year, a woman in Virginia called to say she thought her husband might be his son. But a DNA test was negative.“I was hoping this was it,” he said. “I just feel so guilty about all this.”Yet against the odds and despite the many years, children and fathers sometimes find each other.Cuong Luu was born in Vietnam, the child of an American soldier who met his mother when she cleaned his apartment. The soldier left Vietnam before Mr. Luu was born, and his mother lost contact with him. Soon after, she married an American who worked for the military. He moved the family to the Virgin Islands when Mr. Luu was a toddler.Mr. Luu inherited many of his father’s features, and in the black neighborhood of St. Thomas where he grew up, he was taunted for being white. His mother also shunned him, he said, perhaps ashamed of the hard memories he evoked.At the age of 9, he was in a home for delinquent boys. By 17, he was living on the street, selling marijuana and smoking crack. At 20, he was in prison for robbing a man at gunpoint. When he got out, his half sister took him to Baltimore, where he resumed selling drugs.PhotoJames Copeland and Tiffany Nguyen, his daughter, who was born after he left Vietnam. Credit Lance Murphey for The New York TimesBut then he had a daughter with a girlfriend, and something inside him changed. “I worried I would just go to jail and never see her,” he said of his daughter, Cara, who is 4.Long plagued by questions about his identity, he decided he needed to find his biological father to set his life straight. “I wanted to feel more whole,” said Mr. Luu, 41. “I just wanted to see him with my own two eyes.”The quest became an obsession. Mr. Luu spent every night on his computer, hunting unsuccessfully until he realized he had spelled the name wrong: it was Jack Magee, not McGee.He discovered references to a Jack Magee on a veterans’ Web site and, through Facebook, tracked down a man who had served in the same unit. “What do you want from Jack Magee?” the man asked. “I just want a father,” Mr. Luu replied. “Your dad wants to talk to you,” the man wrote back not long after.Mr. Luu had his DNA tested, and it was a match. In November, Mr. Magee, a retired teacher from Southern California, visited Mr. Luu on his birthday. An awkward relationship, full of possibility but not untouched by resentment and wariness, was born.Mr. Magee now calls his son weekly, checking to make sure he is still working in his job cleaning hospital rooms in Baltimore. He also shipped a used Toyota Corolla from California to Mr. Luu, who had been commuting by bus.“I was stunned he was out there,” Mr. Magee, 75, said in an interview.Now that he has found his father, Mr. Luu said, he feels stronger. But the discovery, he has realized, has not solved his problems. What can a former felon do to make a better living? Go to college? Start a business? Drug dealing remains a powerful temptation.“I just wish I had met him before,” Mr. Luu said. “He could have taught me things.” " Recover the past" , Vietnam vets last battle to find his amerasian childBrian Hjort, a Danish man who has helped Mr. Luu and other Vietnamese track down their fathers, says Amerasians often have unrealistically high expectations for reunions with fathers, hoping they will heal deep emotional wounds. But the veterans they meet are often infirm or struggling economically. Sometimes the relationships are emotionally unfulfilling.“I try to tell them: I can’t guarantee love,” Mr. Hjort said. “I can only try to find your father.”Mr. Hjort, 42, is among a small coterie of self-trained experts who have helped Amerasians track down fathers, mostly pro bono. An industrial painter from Copenhagen, he first met Amerasians while traveling through Vietnam and the Philippines two decades ago and was struck by their desperate poverty.One asked him to find a friend’s father, and to his amazement he tracked the man down even though he had no knowledge of military records. News of Mr. Hjort’s success traveled rapidly through Amerasian circles, and he was soon besieged with pleas for help. Moved by the Amerasians’ suffering, he took on more cases, charging only the cost of his trips to Vietnam. He created a Web site, fatherfounded.org, that brought more requests than he could handle.Working in his spare time, he has found scores of fathers, he estimates. Some had died, and many others hung up on him. A few have threatened to sue him. But perhaps two dozen have accepted their children. And in recent years, veterans, too, have begun asking for help. James Copeland was one.In 2011, Mr. Copeland, by then retired, began reading about Amerasians’ miserable lives in Vietnam. Appalled, he decided to search for his own child.He found Mr. Hjort and sent him money to visit Vietnam. Armed with a few names and a crude map, Mr. Hjort found the village where Mr. Copeland had been based and tracked down the brother of an Amerasian woman who was living in America and who Mr. Hjort believed was Mr. Copeland’s daughter.Mr. Hjort sent a photograph of the woman and her mother to Mr. Copeland, and his heart jumped: he instantly recognized the mother as his old girlfriend. His hands were shaking with excitement as he dialed the daughter’s number and asked: “Is this Tiffany Nguyen?”In the coming days, he visited her, her mother and her three brothers in Reading, Pa., where she runs a nail salon at the Walmart. Ms. Nguyen and her three children spent Thanksgiving 2011 with him in Mississippi. For a time, they talked nightly, and she told him about how her mother had protected her from abuse in Vietnam, about their struggles to adapt to the United States, about how she had studied older men at the Walmart, wondering if one of them was her father.“There were a lot of years to cover,” Mr. Copeland said. “I can sleep a lot better now.”But the reunion has also brought him unexpected heartache. His wife became furious when she discovered that he had a Vietnamese daughter, and she demanded that he not visit her. He refused: Ms. Nguyen is his only biological child. After 37 years of marriage, he and his wife are separated and considering divorce, he said. His wife did not respond to efforts to reach her for comment.Mr. Copeland now helps Mr. Hjort contact veterans they believe are fathers of Amerasians. In his patient drawl, Mr. Copeland calmly tells them his story and urges them to confront the possibility that they, like him, have Vietnamese children.But if they dodge his calls or hang up, he continues to leave messages — with children, with spouses, on answering machines. They need to know, he said.“Some people, they just want to move on and forget it,” he said. “I don’t see how they can do it. But there’s a lot of them that I’m sure that’s the case. They just want to forget.”Father searching for amerasian child 2012-13, 12 casesExploring Stories Behind the Amerasian Experience After the Vietnam War | PBS EducationSEPTEMBER 27, 2017Before beginning this project, I did not know very much about the Vietnam War. Events such as the Tet Offensive and Operation Babylift were events I had heard about, but my knowledge of the events was vague. Since my parents lived through the war as children and came to America as refugees, I have always wanted to learn more about the people and history behind the war. It was important to me to discover what my parents experienced.Vietnamese Amerasians were merely children during the post Vietnam War era. Their American servicemen fathers left Vietnam. Their Vietnamese mothers would often abandon them or send them to orphanages. They were discriminated against and abused due to their appearance. This treatment is only some of what they had to go through when while still living in Vietnam.A Second Chance in the U.S.Fortunately, Robert J. Mrazek, a U.S. Congressman, flew to Vietnam after hearing about an Amerasian boy, named Le Van Minh, who needed medical help.. After seeing the horrid living conditions the Amerasian children endured and how they wanted to “go to the land of [their] father,” Mrazek decided to find a solution. He would eventually come to author the Amerasian Homecoming Act. As a result, the Vietnamese Amerasians, along with their families, were allowed a second chance at life and immigrated to the U.S.Even though I am of Vietnamese descent, I initially did not have any knowledge of Vietnamese Amerasians and their incredible stories. After intensive research and speaking to my parents, who interacted with Amerasians while they were still living in Vietnam, I realized that they had suffered way too much to not be mentioned in a history textbook. Amerasians also had a great impact on both the Vietnamese and American people. Almost 100,000 people immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. and they are now living in better conditions, becoming productive and contributing members of society.A School Project Inspires a Deeper DiveAlthough creating a National History Day project at my school is part of a class assignment for juniors, I created a project as an extracurricular activity when I was a sophomore. The History Day program provides students with the opportunity to dive into a topic and dig deeper than a student would during an average history course.To begin my project, I spent numerous hours researching. I gathered background information on Vietnamese Amerasians and the impact of the Amerasian Homecoming Act. I visited the Watson Library at the University of Kansas, where I found numerous newspaper articles and books from their databases and library. I also researched in other libraries. I contacted two Vietnamese Amerasians that came to America through Operation Babylift and the Amerasian Homecoming Act. Then, I had to write my script, a 500 word process paper with an annotated bibliography, and create my documentary.A Homecoming Act DocumentaryI thought that the topic of U.S. Congressman Robert Mrazek’s stand for Amerasians could be expressed most clearly through a documentary. I used iMovie to create my project and found video clips, images, and music that complemented the information provided. Through this documentary, viewers are enlightened about the agony Amerasians went through and the positive results from Mrazek’s Amerasian Homecoming Act.After working on this project, my determination to learn more about the Vietnam War grew stronger. Meeting Amerasians and hearing their stories made me want to continue to deepen my understanding about their struggles. Today, since most Americans do not know about the Vietnam War, Amerasians and the impacts of the Amerasian Homecoming Act, I feel like it is important topic for young people to examine.Kim Vu is a junior in Seaman High School in Topeka, Kansas. She is currently involved in band, Math Club, Key Club, SHARP Committee, Scholar’s Bowl, Student Council, Writing Center, and Track and Field inside of school. Outside of school, she is involved in the youth folk choir and volunteer at my church and at food banks. Kim won National History's Day Vietnam War Era Prize with this documentary.KIM VU High School StudentAmerasian PhotosThe American Homecoming Act or Amerasian Homecoming Act, was an Act of Congress giving preferential immigration status to children in Vietnamborn of U.S. fathers. The American Homecoming Act was written in 1987, passed in 1988, and implemented in 1989.The act increased Vietnamese Amerasian immigration to the U.S. because it allowed applicants to establish mixed race identity by appearance alone. Additionally, the American Homecoming Act allowed the Amerasian children and their immediate relatives to receive refugee benefitsAbout 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives entered the United States under this act.While the American Homecoming Act was the most successful program in moving Vietnamese Amerasian children to the United States, the act was not the first attempt by the U.S. government. Additionally the act experienced flaws and controversies over the refugees it did and did not include since the act only allowed Vietnamese Amerasian children.BackgroundIn April 1975, the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese forces. Refugees from Vietnam started to arrive in the United States under U.S. government programs. In 1982, the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Immigration Act (PL 97-359). The law prioritized U.S. immigration to children fathered by U.S. citizens including from Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. However, the law did not provide immigration to mothers or half-siblings, only to Amerasian children. Amerasians would generally have to coordinate with their American fathers in order to obtain a visa. This provided a challenge for many since some fathers did not know they had children or the fathers may not be claiming the children. If the Amerasian children did not have documentation from the American father, then they could be examined for “American” physical features by a group of doctors. Additionally, since the U.S. and Vietnam’s governments did not have diplomatic relations, the law could not be applied to Vietnamese Amerasian children. Essentially the Amerasian Immigration Act did little for Amerasian children and even less for Vietnamese Amerasian children.As a way to address Vietnamese Amerasian children, the U.S. government permitted another route for Vietnamese-born children of American soldiers to the United States. The children would be classified as immigrants, but would also be eligible to receive refugee benefits. The U.S. and Vietnam governments established the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). The program is housed in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The ODP created a system where South Vietnamese soldiers and others connected to the U.S. war effort could emigrate from Vietnam to the United States. Initially the Amerasian children had to have documentation from their American fathers to be issued a visa, however the program eventually expanded to individuals that did not have firm documentation. The Orderly Departure Program moved around 6,000 Amerasians and 11,000 relatives to the United States.EnactmentOn August 6, 1987, Rep. Robert J. Mrazek [D-NY-3] introduced the Amerasian Homecoming Bill (H.R. 3171). The bill was cosponsored by 204 U.S. representatives (154 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and 1 Independent). In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act (PL 100-200). The law took effect on March 21, 1988 and allowed Vietnamese Amerasians born January 1, 1962 through January 1, 1976 to apply for immigrant visas until March 21, 1990. Additionally the legislation removed immigration quotas and reduced legal barriers for Vietnamese Amerasians’ immigration. As a result of the act around 20,000 Amerasian children left Vietnam. Prior to the Amerasian Homecoming Act, many Amerasian children faced prejudice in Vietnam sometimes referred to as bui doi (“the dust of life” or “trash”). However, after the act many of these children would be called “golden children” since not only could the Amerasian children move to the United States, but so could their families. The act allowed the spouse, child, mother, or the next of kin of the Amerasian child to emigrate. The act was significant, because it allowed applicants to establish mixed race identity by appearance alone.Immigration processThe American Homecoming Act operated through the Orderly Departure Program in the respective U.S. embassies. U.S. Embassy officials would conduct interviews for Amerasians children and their families. The interviews were intended to prove whether or not the child’s father was a U.S. military personnel. Under the American Homecoming Act, Vietnamese Amerasian children did not have to have documentation from their American fathers; however, if they did their case would be processed quicker. The approval rating for Amerasian applicants was approximately 95 percent. The approved applicants and their families would go through a medical exam. The medical exam was less extensive than other immigration medical exams. If they passed, the U.S. would notify Vietnamese authorities and would process them for departure. The Amerasians would then be sent to the Philippines for a 6-month English language (ESL) and cultural orientation (CO) program. Once the Amerasians arrived in the United States they would be resettled by private voluntary agencies contracted with the U.S. State Department. Some Amerasians gave accounts that some “fake families” approached them as a way to immigrate to the United States. The U.S. Attorney General in conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State submitted program reports to the U.S. Congress every three years.ControversiesWhile the American Homecoming Act was the most successful measure by the United States to encourage Amerasian immigration, the act faced controversies. A primary issue was the act only applied to Amerasian children born in Vietnam. The American Homecoming Act excluded Korea, the Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand. While Amerasian children from outside Vietnam could immigrate to the United States, they could do so only if their fathers claimed them. Most fathers did not recognize their children, especially if they were born to sex workers. In 1993, a class action lawsuit was filed in the International Court of Complaints to establish Filipino Amerasian children’s rights to assistance. The court ruled against the children, stating they were the products of sexual services provided to U.S. service personnel. Since prostitution is illegal, there could be no legal claim for the Filipino Amerasian children. Amerasian advocacy groups are actively attempting to gain recognition for Amerasian children through legal and legislative measures.There were other concerns facing the American Homecoming Act by the Vietnamese immigrants. Some accounts include a Vietnamese woman who attempted to claim American citizenship for her Amerasian son, but the father denied the relationship and responsibility by calling her a prostitute. Since sex workers were largely excluded, many children were unable to participate in the program. In the 1970s, the U.S. cut refugee cash assistance and medical aid to only eight months. Many Amerasian children account of their struggles in public school and very few attended higher education.Amerasian children who stayed in their respective countries found difficulties. Many of the children faced prejudice since their fair skin or very dark skin, blue eyes, or curly black hair would quickly identify them as Amerasian. Additionally the children faced judgment from the new socialist Vietnamese officials and other neighbors since their features positioned them as reminders of the “old enemy.”Amerasian Homecoming Act – 25 Years LaterThe Amerasian Homecoming Act, which passed into law in December 1987 and went into effect a few months later, began with a photojournalist, a homeless boy in Vietnam, and four high school students in Long Island, New York. Twenty five years later, almost 100,000 people have immigrated from Vietnam to the U.S. as a result of the AHA.First, a bit of background. One of the great tragedies of the Vietnam War is the story of the Amerasians–children of U.S. servicemen and Vietnamese women. There are tens of thousands of such children. In Vietnam, they were known as “children of the dust” because they were considered as insignificant as specks of dust, and many (if not most) suffered discrimination, abuse, poverty, and homelessness. Although the fathers of these children were United States citizens, the children did not qualify to immigrate to the U.S. The situation was complicated by the absence of diplomatic relations between the government of the United States and the government of Vietnam. Ten years after the war, the situation for the Amerasians seemed hopeless. A 2009 article from Smithsonian Magazine describes what happened next:In October 1985, Newsday photographer Audrey Tiernan, age 30, on assignment in Ho Chi Minh City, felt a tug on her pant leg. “I thought it was a dog or a cat,” she recalled. “I looked down and there was [Le Van] Minh. It broke my heart.” Minh, with long lashes, hazel eyes, a few freckles and a handsome Caucasian face, moved like a crab on all four limbs, likely the result of polio. Minh’s mother had thrown him out of the house at the age of 10, and at the end of each day his friend, Thi, would carry the stricken boy on his back to an alleyway where they slept. On that day in 1985, Minh looked up at Tiernan with a hint of a wistful smile and held out a flower he had fashioned from the aluminum wrapper in a pack of cigarettes. The photograph Tiernan snapped of him was printed in newspapers around the world. The next year, four students from Huntington High School in Long Island saw the picture and decided to do something. They collected 27,000 signatures on a petition to bring Minh to the United States for medical attention.They asked Tiernan and their congressman, Robert Mrazek, for help.Mrazek began making phone calls and writing letters. Several months later, in May 1987, he flew to Ho Chi Minh City. Mrazek had found a senior Vietnamese official who thought that helping Minh might lead to improved relations with the United States, and the congressman had persuaded a majority of his colleagues in the House of Representatives to press for help with Minh’s visa.Minh came to the U.S., where he still lives. but once he got to Vietnam, the Congressman realized that many thousands of Amerasian children were living in Vietnam, often in terrible conditions. Congressman Mrazek resolved to help these children. The result was the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which went into effect in early 1988.The AHA allowed Amerasians to come to the United States as lawful permanent residents. They are not considered refugees, but they do receive benefits (such as financial assistance and housing) normally reserved for refugees. In an important way, the law was quite succcesful–as a result of the AHA, approximately 25,000 Amerasians and about 70,000 of their family members immigrated to the United States.However, the law was not a success by all measures. For one thing, not all Amerasians in Vietnam learned about the AHA, and so many people who might have qualified to leave Vietnam were unable to do so.Another problem was fraud. One type of fraud involved people who claimed to be Amerasian, but who were not (there was no easy way to tell who was an Amerasian, and many decisions were made based on the person’s physical appearance). However, the more pervasive problem of fraud involved “fake families.” These were people who attached themselves to the Amerasian immigrants’ cases in order to come with them to the U.S. In many cases, the Amerasians agreed to this fraud because the fake families would pay the Amerasians’ expenses. Without this assistance, the Amerasians could not have afforded to immigrate. The extent of the fraud is unknown, but a November 1992 GAO report found that in 1991, about 20% of applicants were rejected for fraud. By 1992, 80% of applicants were rejected for fraud.A final problem–though perhaps this is not a problem with the AHA itself–is that many Amerasians had a tough time adjusting to life in the United States. A 1991-92 survey of 170 Vietnamese Amerasians found that some 14 percent had attempted suicide; 76 percent wanted, at least occasionally, to return to Vietnam. As one advocate put it, “Amerasians had 30 years of trauma, and you can’t just turn that around in a short period of time.”Of course, Amerasians did far better here than they could have in Vietnam, but given their difficult lives back home, the adjustment was often not easy. According to the Encyclopedia of Immigration:In general, the Amerasians who came to the United States with their mothers did the best in assimilating to American society. Many faced great hardships, but most proved resilient and successful. However, only 3 percent of them managed to contact their American fathers after arriving in the United States. By 2009, about 50 percent of all the immigrants who arrived under the law had become U.S. citizens.Now, Amerasians host black tie galas to celebrate their success as a unique immigrant community. And even in Vietnam, where they were vilified for many years, negative feelings towards Amerasians have faded.Finally, on a personal note, my first job out of college was for a social service agency that did refugee resettlement, and so I worked with Amerasians (and others) for a few years in the early 1990s. Of the populations we served, it seemed to me that the Amerasians had been the most severely mistreated. Many were illiterate in Vietnamese and spoke no English. They were physically unhealthy, and they had a hard time adjusting. Twenty five years after the AHA, it seems that Amerasians are finally achieving a measure of success in the United States. Their long journey serves as a reminder that persecuted people need time to become self sufficient. But the Amerasians–like other refugee groups–are well on their way to fully integrating into American society.The Children They Left BehindChildren of the Vietnam War (smithonianmag.com)Vietnamese Amerasians in America : Asian-NationVietnamese Find No Home Here in Their Fathers' Land (NYT 1991)1989 The Dust of Life: The Legal and Political Ramifications of the Continuing Vietnamese Amerasian Problem (elibrary.law.psu.edu)They came here as refugees. Now the U.S. may be deporting some Vietnamese nationals.Vietnamese deportees and Amerasians Thanh Hung Bui , from left, and Cuong Pham, from center, speak to U.S. lawyer and Vietnamese-American Tin Nguyen at a cafe in the suburbs of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on April 19, 2018.James Pearson / ReutersA few days before Christmas last year, Cuong Pham boarded a plane in Texas to fly to his home country of Vietnam, he said.He had last visited the country about a decade before, but this time, Pham wouldn't be returning to the U.S., where his wife and three children live. He was being deported.Pham didn’t want to go back, he said, “because all my life is in the U.S. It's not here.”I want to go back to my family, my wife and children…. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next.Pham was one of a small number of Vietnamese nationals who were deported last December despite a bilateral agreement that apparently excludes them from being deported, according to several immigration and civil rights advocates.In 2008, the U.S. and Vietnam signed a repatriation agreement that explicitly excludes Vietnamese nationals who arrived in the U.S. before July 12, 1995 — the date the two countries reestablished diplomatic relations — from being subject to deportation. Many of those who arrived before that date were refugees of the Vietnam War.But civil rights and immigration groups say they believe that seven Vietnamese nationals who arrived in the U.S. before 1995 were deported late last year and early this year.“Many of them have never been back to Vietnam and many of them don’t have any family there,” Phi Nguyen — litigation director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta (Advancing Justice-Atlanta), which earlier this year filed a lawsuit challenging the detention of Vietnamese nationals not covered under the 2008 agreement — said. “The idea of being returned to a place that they are no longer connected to is causing a lot of fear in the community, especially when people who are in this situation have felt safe for the last several years and have been able to rebuild their life here and create families here.”'AMERASIAN' HOMECOMINGPham, 47, was born in Vietnam and grew up there until he was 20 years old, immigrating to the United States in 1990, he said. The son of a U.S. serviceman, Pham said he came to the U.S. under the Amerasian Homecoming Act, a law that allows some Vietnamese nationals whose fathers were U.S. citizens as well as their next of kin to immigrate to the U.S.Pham received his final order of removal in 2009 following two convictions, he said. In 2000, he was convicted of indecent assault and battery of children under 14, a sex crime. In 2007, he was convicted of driving under the influence.Vietnamese deportee and Amerasian Cuong Pham , 47, who was deported from the U.S., poses outside his former house, where he lived before he fled to the U.S., in central Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on April 20, 2018.Kham / ReutersSince arriving in Vietnam, Pham has settled in a rural area of the country he described as a “jungle” where there is no running water. He said he has had difficulty in securing a job over the last four-and-a-half months as employers have rejected his inquiries based on his multiracial status. His wife has provided him with some financial assistance, but is also working to support their three children.“For me, right now it’s a very, very hard time,” he said by phone from Vietnam. “I want to go back to my family, my wife and children…. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next.”Reuters last month reported that former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius said a “small number” of people protected by the repatriation agreement have been sent back.Osius did not respond to a request for comment.As Cambodian deportations resume, community looks for ways to copeImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson Brendan Raedy said in an email that “both countries maintain and continue to discuss their respective legal positions relative to Vietnamese citizens who departed Vietnam for the United States prior to July 12, 1995.”The U.S. Department of State did not directly address the deportations when contacted by NBC News. Department spokesperson Ambrose Sayles said that the removal of aliens subject to a final order of removal, particularly those who pose a danger to national security or public safety, is a top priority for the U.S. government.“We continue to work closely with Vietnamese authorities to address this issue. ... The U.S. Government and the Vietnamese Government continue to discuss their respective positions relative to Vietnamese citizens who departed Vietnam for the United States,” Sayles said in an email.'IT'S ENTIRELY UP TO VIETNAM'Bill Ong Hing, a professor of law at the University of San Francisco who specializes in immigration law and policy, said that agreements such as the one between the U.S. and Vietnam that should exempt certain individuals from deportation are not law, but rather serve as guidelines that don't necessarily need to be followed.“In spite of the agreement, it's entirely up to Vietnam,” he said. “What usually happens is that the receiving country is not willing to take the people. But if the receiving country is willing to take the person, then there's not much that can be done about that.”A receiving country could be pressured into accepting or decide to accept deportees for various reasons, Hing noted.'Never too late to change': In deportation limbo, Tung Nguyen wants to help fellow felonsHe said it has been and remains uncommon for the repatriation of individuals protected under such agreements to be deported. Whether or not this trend continues is dependent on the Trump administration and ICE offices that prioritize which individuals to deport, he said.As of December 2017, there were more than 8,600 Vietnamese nationals residing in the United States subject to a final order of removal, 7,821 of who have criminal convictions, according to ICE. As of April 12, ICE has removed 76 Vietnamese nationals to Vietnam in fiscal year 2018 and had 156 Vietnamese nationals in detention.Raedy said that in calculating these figures, ICE does not track the year that immigrants with final orders of removal came to the United States.In fiscal years 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, the United States deported a total of 186 Vietnamese nationals, according to ICE data.Vietnamese deportee and Amerasian Cuong Pham , 47, who was deported from the U.S., uses his mobile phone while having a coffee in central Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on April 20, 2018.Kham / ReutersNguyen, the litigation director, said it is uncertain whether this is the first time Vietnamese nationals who arrived prior to 1995 have been deported, but that it is the first time her organization is aware of an effort to deport the individuals in large numbers since the 2008 agreement.Despite the group that has been deported, it does not appear as though Vietnam is willing to accept all pre-1995 Vietnamese nationals who have final orders of removal, Nguyen said.The lawsuit filed by Advancing Justice-Atlanta — along with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus, and the law firm Reed Smith LLP — alleges that at least 45 pre-1995 Vietnamese nationals are being detained without due process.It also stated that "the U.S. government claims that Vietnam is now 'willing to consider' repatriation of Vietnamese who came to the United States before July 12, 1995.”The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Vietnam did not respond to a request for comment.Nonprofits sue over immigration detention of Vietnamese nationals who came as refugeesDeportations of the seven pre-1995 Vietnamese nationals follow detentions in the community that took place last year.In early 2017, community organizations sent out an alert following the detention of about 40 Vietnamese nationals, Nancy Nguyen — the executive director of of the nonprofit VietLead, who is unrelated to Phi Nguyen — said.Pham was among those redetained early last year.The roundups prompted VietLead and several other groups to organize visits in November and December 2017 to a detention center in Georgia, Nancy Nguyen said. Through these visits, the organizations found that both pre- and post-1995 Vietnamese were being detained for prolonged periods of time. They also learned of six pre-1995 Vietnamese who had been deported.Phi Nguyen said ICE’s routine practice for decades was to release pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants within 90 days of their order of removal because the agency knew it could not deport them.The idea of being returned to a place that they are no longer connected to is causing a lot of fear in the community.But beginning in March 2017, ICE began re-arresting those nationals, the lawsuit said. In March and late October to early November, detainees arrested from across the country were sent to detention centers to be interviewed by the Vietnamese Consulate, the suit alleges.A possible victory came on April 17 for some Vietnamese class members represented in the lawsuit when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a provision in a federal law that makes it easier to deport immigrants convicted of certain crimes.“If someone got their deportation order based on one of the crimes covered, then they have the ability to re-visit their removal order,” Phi Nguyen noted.She added that the court's decision will have an impact on class members, but that their cases still need to be examined more closely.“The U.S. not following the agreement is just another sign of it breaking rules and breaking our families apart,” Nancy Nguyen said. “As an organization, we’re working to hold the U.S. accountable to its promises.”Once shunned by many, Vietnamese Amerasians now celebrate their heritage (a San Jose gala in 2008). At a similar gathering, many in the audience wept when an Amerasian family that had just arrived in the United States was introduced. (Catherine Karnow)Read more: Children of the Vietnam WarChildren of Vietnam War servicemen seek U.S. citizenshipRandy Tran walked quickly past the majestic domes and marble statues of Capitol Hill, looking for the Cannon House Office building and the people he believed could help him.Tran, a Vietnamese pop singer who lives in a Bay Area suburb and sleeps on a friend's couch, flew 2,900 miles to be here. He rehearsed what he wanted to say. His English was not perfect. He was afraid he would have just a few minutes to make his case.He had a 3 p.m. appointment in the office of a Wisconsin congressman. He was not exactly sure what the congressman did, but he was certain that this was a powerful man who could help untangle a political process that had ensnared him and thousands like him.Tran came to Washington on behalf of abandoned children of American soldiers and Vietnamese women, born during the Vietnam War and, like him, seeking citizenship in the country their fathers fought for.Called Amerasians, many were left to grow up in the rough streets and rural rice fields of Vietnam where they stood out, looked different, were taunted as "dust of life." Most were brought to the United States 20 years ago after Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act, which allowed the children of American soldiers living in Vietnam to immigrate. But citizenship was not guaranteed, and today about half of the estimated 25,000 Amerasians living in the U.S. are resident aliens.Tran lives in Hayward and travels the country crooning pop songs to Vietnamese fans at restaurants and concert halls. But he feels unsettled."I feel like I belong nowhere," said Tran, whose father was an African American whose name he likely will never know, but who gave him the mocha-colored skin so different from other Vietnamese."If I go to Little Saigon, they say, 'Are you Vietnamese? You look black.' If I go to the American community, they say, 'You're not one of us. You're Vietnamese.' "But most wrenching for Tran is his lack of citizenship, a constant reminder of being an outsider in what he considers his fatherland."Our fathers served for the country, fought for freedom," Tran said. "I am not a refugee, but I am being treated as one. We are Americans."Tran and 21 other Amerasians flew to Washington, D.C., for three days in July to lobby for the Amerasian Paternity Act. It would give Amerasians born during the Vietnam and Korean wars automatic citizenship, rather than requiring them to pass tests in English.Most of them had never been to Washington. Some purchased their first suits for the trip. Some spoke no English at all.Tran does not know his age. On paper he is 34, but he guesses he is closer to 37.His mother left him in an orphanage in Da Nang when he was days old. A few years later, a woman in a nearby village adopted him to help care for her cows. She refused to let him call her "mother."The neighbors gawked at his dark skin; the village children yanked his curly hair. At night he would dream that his hair had turned straight and that he could pour a liquid over his body to turn his face pale. He would hide behind the bamboo mat he slept on."They looked at us like we were wild animals, not people," Tran said.When the Homecoming Act passed in 1988, thousands of Vietnamese who wanted to escape the Communist government used the Amerasians as a device to flee. At 17, Tran was sold to a family for three gold bars. When the family got to America, they asked Tran to leave their home. He moved in with a friend's family.Like Tran, many Amerasians lacked the English skills, education and family connections that had helped other Vietnamese refugees assimilate. Many did not attend school in Vietnam and arrived in America illiterate. Many migrated to Vietnamese communities where they were once again shunned. Some turned to drugs or gangs.They received eight months of government assistance, including healthcare, English lessons and some job training. But the government did not help Amerasians locate their fathers, and funding for the program ended in 1995.In Washington, Tran and the other Amerasians crowded into a friend's house. There was Vivian Preziose from Queens, whose father brought her to the U.S. when she was 10. There was Jimmy "Nhat Tung" Miller from Seattle, who found his father a couple of years before the man died. There was Huy Duc Nguyen from Dallas, whose only clue about his father is that his last name sounds something like "Sheffer."They mapped out their plans. Preziose passed out 435 folders containing a letter she wrote. The next day they would deliver a folder to every congressional office. They also had appointments on Capitol Hill, so they rehearsed what they would say.Some stumbled over their words. Preziose encouraged them to speak from their hearts. Nguyen reminded them not to wear jeans. Tran advised them to speak slowly.A year ago, few of the Amerasians knew one another. That changed when Nguyen went to a screening of a documentary about Amerasians stuck in Vietnam and met others like him. They talked about helping those still in Vietnam and started reaching out to Amerasians across the country. They knew of Tran from his singing.Tran urged them to lobby for the citizenship bill, sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose). In September 2007, they formed the Amerasian Fellowship Assn., which now has 5,000 members.They had grown up haunted by a raw sense of being thrown away by their parents. Now mostly in their 30s and 40s, they came together for political reform, and along the way formed a community for those who felt invisible.The day after they handed out the folders, Tran anxiously waited on the marble steps of the Cannon building for his team to arrive.By the time they got to Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner's office (R-Wisconsin), they were five minutes late.They met a man in a tan suit with a faint smile.Tran introduced himself and began describing the difficulties faced by Amerasians. Many cannot speak English, he said, making it difficult to pass the citizenship test.The meeting lasted less than 25 minutes -- not enough time for Tran to say that he was not allowed to go to school in Vietnam, that while he tended to the cows he would peer through the schoolhouse windows at the students learning to read.Tran thought the man seemed confused why they were there. But he promised to do what he could to help.It wasn't until the man handed out his business card that Tran realized he wasn't talking to the congressman from Wisconsin. He was talking to a staffer."I didn't know who he was," Tran said. "I just knew we wanted to meet him. I wanted to tell our story."There is a lot Tran does not understand. He's not sure which of the two houses of Congress the bill is stuck in or why it is taking so long to become law. When he and other Amerasians met with Lofgren in the Capitol building, he thought they were in the White House.Lofgren warned the group that it was unlikely the bill would pass this year. But she promised to reintroduce it next year.Some of the Amerasians decided to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, believing the names of their fathers might be inscribed on the wall.Tran decided not to go. He has no clues as to who his father is. When Tran walked past an older black man on the street, he turned and looked.He still wonders why his mother left him to suffer in Vietnam. Once, it was a source of deep anger. But his fury turned to sympathy when he learned about the harsh conditions during the war, the stigma of having a child out of wedlock with an American.Perhaps she gave him away hoping he would have a better life. He once wrote a song called "After the War." When he performs it before Vietnamese audiences, they are often brought to tears.Tran later wrote an e-mail to the staffer. He mistakenly identified the man as "Mrs." He also sent along an English translation of the lyrics of "After the War."He has yet to hear back. But he has faith that America will come through, [email protected]

12 Facts From the Mueller Report That Donald Trump Doesn't Want You to KnowUpdated on July 19, 2019jeff61bJeff is a computer professional who takes a great interest in politics and tries to always distinguish fact from opinion.Contact AuthorOfficial Portrait of Donald Trump and Robert MuellerThere are a lot of misconceptions about the Mueller Report due to the fact that Donald Trump and his supporters falsely claim that the report clears Trump and his campaign of any wrongdoing. In fact, it does quite the opposite. Much of the information in the Mueller Report is very damning toward Trump and his campaign.Please don’t take my word for any of this. I encourage you to download the full Mueller Report and verify for yourself that everything in this article is accurate using the page numbers I've included.1. Trump believed the Mueller investigation would destroy his presidency.When Attorney General Jeff Sessions told President Trump that a Special Counsel had been appointed, the President slumped back in his chair and said, "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked." Trump also told Sessions that “you were supposed toprotectme.” (Mueller Report, Volume II, Page 78)Trump’s obsessive fear of the investigation was also evident in his public statements for the entire 2 years that the Mueller investigation was going on. In addition to his constant whining about the investigation and repetition of “No collusion, no collusion”, he personally attacked Robert Mueller and the other investigators, falsely claiming they were “Trump haters” and that Mueller had a conflict of interest. Trump’s advisers told him that the alleged “conflicts of interest” by Mueller were meritless. (Volume II, page 4)2. Russian interference in the election was far greater than most of us ever knew.Russia used several different methods to interfere in the 2016 election. Volume I of the Mueller report includes many pages dedicated to discussing the efforts of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), based in St. Petersburg, Russia.The report makes it clear that Russia was firmly committed to getting Trump elected president. An email to Donald Trump Jr. from the son of a Russian real estate developer stated that they wanted to meet with Trump to discuss incriminating information about Hillary Clinton as "part of Russia and its government 's support for Mr. Trump." The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to the offer by saying “I love it”. This resulted in the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City. (Mueller Report, Volume I, page 110)3. Russia engaged in “Information Warfare” to help the Trump campaign.The Mueller Report says that Russia called their social media campaign “Information Warfare”. In addition to purchasing political advertisements on social media, Facebook identified 470 Russian-controlled Facebook accounts that collectively made 80,000 posts between January 2015 and August 2017. Facebook estimated the IRA reached as many as 126 million persons through its Facebook accounts.In January 2018, Twitter announced that it had identified 3,814 Russian-controlled Twitter accounts and notified approximately 1.4 million people Twitter believed may have been in contact with an IRA-controlledaccount. (Volume I, pages 14–15)4. Russia used excessive hacking of private servers to help Trump win.Early in 2016, the Russian intelligence service hacked the emails of Clinton campaign volunteers and employees as well as the DNC. In May 2016 Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos said that the Trump campaign received word from the Russian Government that they could assist the Trump campaign through the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton. (Volume I, Page 1)"Around the time that the DNC announced in mid-June 2016 the Russian government's role in hacking its network, the GRU (Russian Intelligence) began disseminating stolen materials through the fictitiousonlinepersonas "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0." The GRU later released additional materials through the organization WikiLeaks." (Mueller Report, Volume I, Page 4)Although Donald Trump claims he knew nothing of the Russian hacking, at a July 2016 news conference, he said, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” (Volume I, page 49)5. Russians staged political rallies for Trump in the United States.The Mueller Report states that Russians posed as US grassroots organizers to work with Trump supporters and Trump campaign officials to organize rallies. The investigation could not prove that these Trump campaign officials knew they were working with Russians. (Mueller Report, Executive Summary to Volume I, page 4)6. Russia made direct offers of help to senior members of the Trump campaign.Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner met in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer to discuss ways the Russians could help them beat Hillary Clinton.Volume I of the Mueller Report details multiple contacts between Russians and members of the Trump campaign beginning in April 2016 and continuing through the November election. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, George Papadopoulos, Carter Page and others all had multiple contacts with assorted Russians who offered to help with the campaign. Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, even shared analytical polling data with suspected RussianspyKonstantin Kilimnik that could be used to help Russia target their interference in our election. (Mueller Report, Volume I, page 7)7. Yes, there WAS collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.The Mueller Report makes it explicitly clear that the Trump campaign not only knew about Russian efforts to help Trumpwin, but members of the campaign worked with the Russians. Paul Manafort even gave the Russians analytical polling data that could help them target their interference. (Volume I, page 7)The broadest definition of collusion is “secret cooperation in order to cheat or deceive others”. The cooperation between the Russian government and the Trump campaign certainly meets that definition of collusion, but as the Mueller Report explains, collusion “…is not a specific offense or theory of liability found in the United States Code, nor is it a term of art in federal criminal law”.The actual crime that Mueller was investigating was conspiracy, which is harder to prove. According to Mueller, the cooperation between Russia and the Trump campaign did not meet the definition of a conspiracy because the Trump campaign did not expressly ask Russia for their help. (Volume I, page 180)8. Mueller was prohibited from concluding that the president was guilty.Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that, since the Mueller investigation did not indict him, he is completely innocent of any wrongdoing. In reality, before the investigation began, it was decided that Mueller would not make any conclusion about the president’s guilt or innocence.Volume II of the Mueller report states that the Office of Legal Counsel issued a statement that the Justice Department could not indict or prosecute a sitting president because it would undermine the ability of the president to do his job.Furthermore, it was decided at the beginning of the investigation that they would not make a conclusion as to whether the president committed a crime. However, a president does not have immunity after leaving office and may be prosecuted at that time. This investigation collected evidence so that it could be used after the president leaves office. (Mueller Report, Volume II, Page 1)We considered whether to evaluate the conduct we investigated under the Justice Manual standards governing prosecution and declination decisions, but we determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the President committed crimes. (Mueller Report, Volume II, Page 2)While others could be indicted and prosecuted, as far as the president is concerned, Mueller could only gather evidence about potential wrongdoing that could be used by Congress or by prosecutors after he leaves office.9. Mueller found plenty of evidence that Trump committed crimes.If you read nothing else, at least read Volume II, pages 1 through 8 of the Mueller Report. Here are the highlights of those 8 pages.Trump directed his aides to conceal emails about the June 9 Trump Tower meeting.Trump edited a press statement about the Trump Tower Russia meeting by removing a reference to an offer of information helpful to the campaign and changing it to read that the meeting was about adoptions of Russian children.Trump repeatedly tried to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to stop the investigation.Trump expressed the belief that the Attorney General should “protect” him.Trump told Don McGahn to call the Acting Attorney General and get him to fire Mueller. Then, in early 2018, Trump pressured McGahn to deny that Trump ordered him to have the special prosecutor fired.After Michael Flynn began cooperating with the investigation, Trump’s lawyers asked for a “heads up” if Flynn knew of any information that implicates the president. When Flynn’s lawyer declined to do that, Trump’s lawyers told Flynn that reflected “hostility” toward the president. (Volume II, Page 6)While Paul Manafort was on trial, Trump publicly praised him and called him brave man for refusing to “break”.Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, lied to Congress to minimize Trump’s involvement in the Trump Tower Moscow project. Trump’s personal counsel asked Cohen to stay on message and not contradict the president.After the FBI found evidence that Cohen lied, Trump privately messaged him to “stay strong” and not “flip”. Cohen also discussed pardons with the president’s personal counsel.After Cohen began cooperating with the investigation, Trump called him a “rat” and suggested that his family members committed crimes.Based on everything in those 8 pages, there is only one inescapable conclusion: President Trump engaged in multiple acts of obstruction of justice and witness tampering by encouraging people to lie, concealing evidence, firing or attempting to fire people who were investigating him and dangling pardon’s for people who don’t “turn” on him.10. Mueller’s final summary was very damning of Trump.Since Mueller was prohibited from making any conclusion about the president’s guilt, he chose his words very carefully. The following 2 quotes are from Volume II, page 7:“The President's position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses-all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.”“Many of the President's acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, took place in public view. That circumstance is unusual, but no principle of law excludes public acts from the reach of the obstruction laws.”Here is Mueller’s final word about Trump and Obstruction of Justice.“If we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” (Mueller Report, Volume II, page 8)11. Mueller says it is up to Congress to determine if the President committed a crime.Near the end of the Mueller Report there is a lengthy section about Congress’s responsibility to take action when a president commits a crime like obstruction of justice. It is explicitly clear that this investigation was not allowed to determine the president’s guilt or innocence of any crime and that only Congress can do that. The purpose of the investigation was only to collect the evidence, present it in the report and let Congress decide what to do with that information.“Congress has Article I authority to define generally applicable criminal law and apply it to all persons – including the President.” (Volume II, Page 174)“The final step in the constitutional balancing process is to assess whether the separation of-powers doctrine permits Congress to take action within its constitutional authority notwithstanding the potential impact on Article II functions. In the case of the obstruction-of-justice statutes, our assessment of the weighing of interests leads us to conclude that Congress has the authority to impose the limited restrictions contained in those statutes on the President's official conduct to protect the integrity of important functions of other branches of government.” (Volume II, Page 177)In other words, Congress, the ball is in your court now.12. Oh, and one more thing: Attorney General Barr completely misrepresented the findings of the Mueller Report.Link - Mueller Disagreed With Barr's Summary of the Mueller Report - NBC NewsIf you’re wondering why so many people believe the Mueller Report clears Trump of wrongdoing, it's because, long before anyone else had been allowed to see the report, Attorney General Barr released a 4-page memo that wrongly stated the Mueller Report found no wrongdoing by President Trump. After Barr released his summary of the Mueller Report, Robert Mueller sent him a letter stating that Barr’s 4-page summary was misleading and did not accurately represent the findings of that investigation.As mentioned previously, Donald Trump wanted an Attorney General who would protect him. It looks like he found one in Robert Barr. Instead of being impartial and objective, as his job requires, Barr deliberately and repeatedly tried to spin the Mueller report to favor the president even though the report reveals a lot of illegal and dishonest activities by Trump and his campaign.

About 100,000 children in Jammu and Kashmir are estimated (by UNICEF) to be orphans. A poor fatherless child under the age of 18 falls in the category of an orphan. Most of the orphans here are a result of the ongoing conflictthere are 812 NGOs in Jammu and Kashmirand some who work in this field are as given below:-Orphans at Khansahib, Budgam found a refuge under an NGO called Aash.Two of the orphan brides will wed this month and Aash provided them clothing and cash on Saturday in a simple event.During the events, various other orphans, cancer patients were also assisted financially.Aash Chairperson Qurat ul Ain said they have chosen a backward area because who needed more help and support.She said the orphans approached them many a times so they started to work for their welfare.“Someone has to come forward to help these needy people who are living in these far-flung areas and Aash is trying its best to reach them,” she said.Locals have also expressed their happiness over the event.Gulzar Ahmad, a local said that they live in a far-flung area where people are neglected by the government.J&K Yateem Trust J&K Yateem Trust is the first volunteer attempt to help orphans and widows of the state. It was started by Abdul TakZaingereeinSopur with a couple of orphans to take care of. A government employee by profession was an eager social worker. “He used to look for opportunities to help somebody even before establishing an orphanage,” remembers his son Zahoor Ahmed Tak, who is running the institution now. He left his job to establish a home for orphans.Zahoor rewinds a bit and shares how his father conceived the idea of establishing an orphanage. Senior Tak once received a postcard from a boy, Mohammed Sayid, who was an orphan. Sayid was eager to study but his mother refused to support because she was very poor. Senior Tak went to that place, verified the details and agreed to help the boy. “This made Tak sahib to think of many other similar cases and an idea of grooming these children struck his mind and J&K Yateen Trust came into existence,” says Zahoor. In 1973 it was shifted to Srinagar “to get recognition and to occupy a centrally located place”. The trust has 80 branches spread all over the state, one branch in every Tehsil except for Kupwara where the institution is working on the block level, as the area is worst hit by the conflict. The trust takes care of 500 children in nine orphanages and provides educational assistance to some orphans at home (orphans who are living with their families)The trust also has separate schemes for widows and orphan girls -Programmes like ‘widow rehabilitation scheme’ in which a widow is helped to be financially independent. She is provided things like a provisional store, a cow, charkha or any other means worth Rs. 25000 to establish a livelihood. Till now the trust has made 450women financially independent. Unskilled widows are provided ration assistance to save them from starvation. The trust runs about 8 craft centers where exclusively orphan girls or young widow are taught a craft. It also facilitates the marriage of orphan girls by providing them a ‘wedding kit’ costing Rs 6000. About 25000 girls have been benefitted. They are presently running two schools also. The trust works exclusively on public donation amounting to about 3.5 crore rupees annually. “In Ramazan, we are at zero. We are done with our expenditures for this year, now this time we are getting money of zakat, sadka and other,” says Zahoor. “Last year due to the unrest we fell short of 57 lakhs, so we had to reduce some of our expenditures.” Their paid staff strength is 200 and about 1000 are volunteers.J&K Yateem Khaana Founded in the year 2000. The J&K YateemKhaana is a subsidiary institution of J&K Muslim Welfare Society established in 1973. It takes care of 500 orphans (boys) in its hostel ‘Raahat Manzil’. Apart from running a higher secondary school, they are planning to establish a degree college, a hospital, polyclinics, health centers and diagnostic centers in the 14 kanals of land meant for the orphans. The institution usually looks for “disowned orphans” who have nowhere to go. It runs another orphanage inDoda, besides having small units in every district. The J&K YateemKhaana provides educational assistance to orphan girls’ also. It also has 700 widows registered who receive Rs 300 every month. They are running seven craft centers to train the widows and orphans girls to make them financially independent. More than 600 orphan girls’marriage have been undertaken by this institution. Most of its budgeted expenses come from local individual donors and some is contributed by foreign contributors. Sometimes an odd tourist also donates. “This year only a couple from Kenya came and made some donation, they had sent their son earlier with the donation, so, the flow of funds is quite consistent,” says Ahadullah.J&K Yateem Foundation Increase in the number of widows and orphans motivated the founders of J&K Yateem Foundation to think about establishing this institution. It started as a small center of ‘Bait-ulHilal’ with 32 orphans (boys). It is running two orphanages now, one at Srinagar and other at Kulgam, taking care of 80 orphans. This trust is registered with the government of India under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), which allows them to accept foreign donations. It helps300 widows by giving them Rs 500 per month. “Last three unrests in Kashmir affected our budget a bit, so, we preferred to cut the scale rather than cutting the number of the beneficiaries,” says Syed Abdul Hamid, Patron. Some orphan girls apart from getting Rs.1000 per month are provided aid through sponsored programmes of Girls Upliftment in Domestic Environment (GUIDE). The other sponsored schemes include Higher Education Scholarship Programme Professional (HESP), for both girls and boys. Non-local sponsors include Save the Children (for students), Mercy Universal London(for widows), Action Aid and Canadian based International Development Relief Foundation (a project of establishing medical camps). The foundation also provides financial assistance of Rs 5000-10,000 for the marriage of an orphan girl. The staff strength of the institution is 39 in addition to the numerous volunteers and the yearly expenditure of the institution on the destitute is about 2 to 3 crore.Sakhawat Center Seeing the number and the needs of the destitute in the state Dr Yousuf-ul-Umer dedicated an exclusive branch of Iqbal Memorial Trust to social service in 2005. An engineer by profession, Dr Yousuf has dedicated his life to helping the needy. “I did my premature retirement from the service just to dedicate whole of my time to this noble cause,” he says. Within six years Sakhawat Center established its offices in each district of J&K except Leh and Kargil. The working pattern of SakhawatCentre is different from other destitute centers. The center meets the needs of special children at their own places, without taking them away from their mothers or other family members. This centre takes care of about 7000 orphans. “We cannot separate these children from their mother’s lap,” says the chairman. Apart from taking care of orphans, this centre provides financial assistance of about Rs. 10,000 each many orphan girls for marriages. Last year they had 270 girls on their list. Sakhawat also offers “merit cum means scholarship” open for all students of the state with a preference to orphans. This year 720 students were benefitted all over the state. The amount each student gets is Rs 6000. The scholarship varies for professional courses; it goes up to Rs. 30,000. The boy who topped the CET medical merit list two years back was aided by this centre. All the expenditure is met by independent donors. The centre receives 2-3 crore rupees every year and nothing is left as profit money, “every single penny is spent in good-will”. The entire staff of Sakhawat centre serve the institution as volunteers and charge nothing, they all are paid by the parent body Iqbal Memorial Trust for their contribution in the Trust (Parent body). “All the staff here works for free, for a noble cause”, says Yousuf.Child Nurture and Relief Kashmir (CHINAR) Kashmir CHINAR is working in Kashmir in collaboration with its sister organisation operating from United States (Chinar US). The organisation is taking care of about 20 children, boys and girls. One feature that makes this ‘home’different from others is the presence of two ‘mothers’ instead of having a warden. Besides the 20 in the ‘home’ it takes care of the expenses of 20 other children in their own homes. In this case, the expense of each child is about Rs 1800 per year. CHINAR admits children who have lost both parents and should be 4-7 years of age. They want to groom the child from the very beginning. Though in some cases they have relaxed this condition. Apart from the contribution made by the US sister organisation, they also accept donations from individuals. “We organize fundraising functions yearly where high dignitaries are invited who contribute lakhs of rupees,” says one of the executive members of CHINAR. Apart from helping orphans, CHINAR has rehabilitated two earthquake affected villages in Uri and provided help to the children impacted by the avalanche in Waltango. The executive members were reluctant to share the expenditure and annual budget of the organisation. Koshish Dr RoufMohi-ud din Malik, one of the founder members of Jammu and Kashmir YateemFoundation, started an independent organisation to support the destitute of Kashmir. The primary aim is to work on “basic rights” which usually destitute are deprived of due to lack of exposure and knowledge. This organisation does not have a special home for the orphans, widows or half-widows but their workers and volunteers go to an area, identify the needy and try to meet their needs at their own places rather than displacing them from their locus. Koshish sensitizes and mobilizes the people about the rights of the destitute. The founder of the organisation believes that the government provides less but a constant aid to this section of society, so awareness about that can be more beneficial than providing donation from individuals. The motto of the organisation to make this affected section of society live as commoners and to not make them realize that they are different from the normal population. “When these children from orphanages are sent home either for an occasional visit or to live back, they feel a misfit in their natural environment because of living in a comparatively higher standard in their orphanages,” says DrRouf. In the four years of its existence, Koshish has provided 20,000livelihood kits which include a provisional store, 4 cattle, a sheep or any other means that can help a widow to become financially independent. The initiative annually generates 25-30 lakh rupees from individual donors apart from the funds received from CRY (Child Relief and You) and ECHO (Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission), European Commission’s department for Humanitarian aid. Besides, providing financial help Koshish provides educational assistance to many. It ’s paid staff strength is 24 and dozens volunteerH.E.L.P (Human Efforts for Love and Peace) Foundation To help underprivileged section of people was the childhood dream of Nighat Shafi which inspired her to start an NGO, HELP Foundation. Initially, she used to tie up with hospitals and go for medical camps. Once during a medical camp inside Dal Lake she saw schools were burned down and children were playing on the roads. This struck her and she talked to the mothers of the locality and started her first school in 1997. About 325 orphans from the fisherfolk community were enrolled there. “We believe in assisting needy people, we want them to be self-sufficient so that they don’t have to beg or become deprived, for this we give them one time assistance and we make sure after earning they pay us back so that from that money we can help other needy people also,” says NighatShafi, Chairman HELP Foundation. The HELP Foundation runs an orphanage also which was started in 1998 with 8 kids. Now it supports 40. Initially, orphanage used to have kids till 12th class but they are now planning to reduce it to 8th class as they feel a child can be best nourished at his/her home only and this can reduce their stress level as well. “This foundation mainly focuses on the problems of children and women that have worsened due to conflict,” she says. The organization works mainly on local Zakat money and for different projects, they have different sponsors. Yearly total money collected is 50 to 60 lakh rupees which Nighat says comes from friends and relatives only as people don’t contribute as per their religious norms. She feels if people donate as per law then the day is not far when there will be no needy person in our Kashmir. “We have made women capable of making day to day kitchen things like spices for which we get orders from marriage parties also and in different vocational programs we have trained our women folk in tailoring and now they are making uniforms and clothes on demand, sometimes we go for exhibitions too”. The Foundation has build schools in the outskirts of Kashmir, at some places they are assisting schools to run properly, they have opened a private library, arranged theatre festivals, film festivals, workshops and seminars for children and women and also organise mental counselling programs as stress levels are high in Kashmir. They provide marriage kits to needy girls. The total number of students associated with this foundation is more than 1000, including the dropouts from KunanPoshpora who were in extreme stress and left their studies due to social stigma and low income. About 1500 females get assistance from another scheme of Micro Financing Kashmir Women Credit Corporation, which exclusively works in empowering of downtrodden women. This Foundation is working in Jammu and in Ramban also and their main focus has always been on providing education, healthcare and livelihood opportunities.Basera-e-Tabassum Basera-e-Tabassum (Abode of Smiles), a rights and needs based comprehensive rehabilitation Centre came up at a time, when the children of the valley were sleeping to the rumble of gunfire than to cradlesongs, seeing more corpses than toys and mourning more than smiling. The center was set up on May 12, 2002, in Sulikoot, a village one kilometer away from Kupwara town. To save both the lives and minds of children from the psychosomatic disorders and the inhumanity caused by the armed conflict, which erupted in 1990s in Kashmir, Borderless World Foundation (BWF), a Pune based NGO took up the initiative in 1997 and visited the strife-torn and the then militancy hotbed Kupwara for project survey. The BWF found ample count of orphans, most of them being the children of slain militants. In 2002, the organization foundedBasera-e-Tabassum “Abode of smiles”. This rehabilitation center is exclusively meant for girls, aiming at fighting for their basic rights, survival, development and participation. The project is the brainchild of Adhik&Bharati, who were in their teens when they came to Kashmir for project study. The duo hail from well-off business families in Pune. Shunning the metropolitan comforts and the luxurious life at home, Bharti and Adhik embraced a mission when they chose this backward area. “We had to tread a very difficult and treacherous path to accomplish the mission. Initially, we had to face very tough time because we were strangers in a strange land. No one knew us here. But gradually we explored the route and things turned easy,” says Adhik, who presently is the chairperson of the NGO, Borderless world Foundation. “The concept of borderless world foundation (BWF) originated in 1997, when we started work in this strife-torn and highly disturbed land. During work here, we would often realize that people of nation have failed to serve this, emotionally, physically and psychologically ruined population,” says Adhik. “We were deeply struck when we visited the villages of Kupwara and found girls of a very tender age stuck in trauma. Their fathers took up the arms and they were left to bear the brunt of the violence. I don’t say militancy is responsible for everything but it certainly victimized the children to a great extent,” says Bharti. In the beginning, Basera-e-tabassum took in just four girls. “We used to convince locals that this project would benefit the needy but the clerics would hinder our progress because the feared us as proselytizers and even fatwa was issued against us. But gradually locals shouldered the work and we succeeded in winning the hearts of people,” recounts Adhik. Once, during their field research, Bharti and Adhikwere confronted by militants who asked them a number of debilitating questions about their motives. “The militants understood everything when we explained to them about our project. They didn’t do anything with us instead they acclaimed us highly for this humanitarian effort and also apologized,” says Adhik, the Chairperson of BWF. “It was not the end. Our being Hindus, made everyone to doubt us. We were picked up by militants nearly nineteen times. But every time our luck, resilience, determination and perseverance saved us. Many times in Kandi Handwara and Dardpora Kupwara, Poutashay and Chandigam Lolab we had to face the questions from militants.” Google+ Instagram You May Like Work + Money Far & Wide TheTopFiveVPN India Today Quarantine To Access H Streaming T We don't ne Kapil Dev r Akhtar's pr Thing In Th 7 Yoga Pose Thing In Th 15 Forbidde Can Never V 4/16/2020 The Grace of Charity.Baser-e-tabassum -Sulikoot at present houses 55 girls, age 3 to 20 years. Fifty girls are studying in private schools and rest five in government schools. The eldest among these girls are studying in the first year at Government Degree College Kupwara. She has been in this center for the last ten years. Jameela, a girl who hails from Kukroosa, is presently studying science (11th class) in Fergusson College Pune, has grown up in Basera-e-tabasum. Her militant father was killed a few months after she was born. The surprising but praiseworthy tale related to this project is about a young lady, SaleemaBhat, who has been managing the entire functioning of this center for last nine years, most of the times in absence of its founders. She is working as the project coordinator for Basera-e-Tabassum “At the beginning, it seemed to be a very tough job to manage the lives of children especially the nascent ones but now I don’t need to put a Herculean effort. I don’t want to move away from my children and I really can’t afford separation. My life is clutched in their souls,” says Saleema. The children here call her didi. Adhik has high regard for Saleema. “She is a goddess. I am elder to her but she is chariy mother. A mother can’t take care of her own child the way she cares.” Nearly one and a half lac rupees is spent every month on this Rehabilitation Center (BeT). This amount goes into the meals, paying school fee, purchasing uniforms, books and notebooks, bags and other daily commodities needed by the girls here. The aim of the project is to ensure a complete family environment, by guaranteeing the love as well as equal care, which refrains them (girls) to think about their homes. “There has not been any aide from the locals but I must not downplay the role of JKarmed police battalion, which is staying in WayanGundisana and 28 DivHed Quart, Zangali. They helped us at the time when there was none to come forward. During last year summer unrest, JKAP used to get us gas cylinders here and also deliver some edible stuff. Whenever we would go on the winter tour, most of the arrangements were made by them,” says SaleemaBhat. “The main source of funding has been the people of Pune. They are regularly aiding us to run these orphanages,” says Adhik. “Working in Kashmir, I realized that it is the Land of affectionate and fair humans. Whether, it was militants, army or the local Kashmiris, no one did harm us. Instead, we were encouraged by everyone,” adds Adhik.thank you….