Minnesota state lawmaker says her family history involves illegal immigration

On Monday, a state senator from Minnesota informed her colleagues that she and her family were in the United States illegally after fleeing Vietnam following the Vietnam War.

Rep. Kaohly Vang Her was present during Monday’s special session of the Minnesota Legislature, called by Gov. Tim Walz, and legislators discussed potential changes to MinnesotaCare eligibility for those without proper documentation, as the Daily Caller reported.

Her took advantage of the tense situation to tell her coworkers that she is an illegal immigrant and offer a tale of how she happened to live to the United States.

She mentioned that she has been spending a great deal of time with her dad of late, who migrated the family to the United States after the Vietnam War ended. She once questioned her dad about the family’s immigration to the United States.

Previous assumptions upended

Her grandfather was a colonel in that war, so she assumed that was why her family was allowed to enter the United States, however, her father later said that wasn’t the case.

The lawmaker added that her father was an employee of the United States Consulate who was fluent in English and could type “really fast.”

According to Her, the family lived in the refugee camps, but her father took a job processing paperwork for refugees who came to the United States, relocating to the embassy.

While he was an employee at the U.S. Consulate, the family had three chances to visit the United States but failed on multiple occasions.

How they got here

Her’s parents worked for a Christian organization, which also did not qualify them for legal immigration. But they were able to find a way by fudging the paperwork, to get to the U.S.

“What my father did was, one of our uncles worked for USAID, and because his mother had died, my father, as the one processing the paperwork, put my grandmother down as his mother,” Her said.

“And so, I am illegal in this country. My parents are illegal here in this country. And when we were fleeing that situation, never one time did my family say, ‘Let’s look at which state has the greatest welfare and which state has the greatest benefits, because that’s the state we’re going to go to,'” she said.

“Nobody leaves their country unless they have to leave that country,” she added.

Her told her fellow lawmakers that she shared the story because she wanted them to consider precisely what sorts of people they are labeling as illegal immigrants.