Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act of 1997: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims

The transcript of the June 26, 1997 House subcommittee hearing on H.R. 371, the bill that became the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act. That law let Hmong who fought for the United States in Laos take the citizenship civics test through an interpreter and with a relaxed residency requirement — formal acknowledgment, decades late, of service the United States had spent thirty years not admitting to. As a primary document it is the record of that argument being made on the floor, in the words of the members and witnesses who made it. Seventy-six pages, Government Printing Office. Dry reading and unusually direct evidence. Read with the U.S. Citizenship Study Guide in Hmong, which is what the law created demand for.