Review - Children Born of War in the Twentieth Century by Sabine Lee

Abstract

In the 1980s, the United States passed a series of legislative changes that gave preferential immigration status to “children of United States Citizens,” allowing more than 21,000 Vietnamericans born during the Vietnam War (1955–75) to immigrate to America. Sometimes known as the bụi đời (“dust of life”), these young men and women were the children born of American soldiers and local Vietnamese women during the Vietnam War. Targets of Vietnamese hatred toward America and facing rejection in their country of birth, they were traveling to America in search of a place to finally call home. “Instead of saying welcome to these children,” declared then-US president Ronald Reagan in 1982, “we should say welcome home.” Show more