Looking Back at Minnesota's Refugee History

As images of Afghans clinging to airplanes in Kabul lit up screens around the world, calls flooded into the International Institute of Minnesota (IIM)—Minnesotans offering to open their homes to people desperate to escape theirs.

Governor Tim Walz and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan made the invitation official in a letter to President Joe Biden: “Minnesota is eager to uphold that tradition by welcoming families and children and providing the stable foundation they need to rebuild their lives, achieve their highest potential, and contribute to our state.”

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine what Minnesota would be without our foreign-born, immigrant, and refugee communities. Not only have Hmong refugees broadened our previously bland palates with bok choy and Thai chili peppers at farmers’ markets, but Southeast Asian and East African refugees and Latinx immigrants have expanded the economy by playing a crucial role in Minnesota’s workforce. Refugees have bolstered Minnesota’s health care system with 13,000 workers, for example, and rescued meat-processing plants from a labor shortage. Oh, and then there’s Sunisa Lee and all-around gymnastics Olympic gold.

Of course, historians note, there have also always been strains of anti-immigration ideology in Minnesota (some early Norwegian immigrants went back to Norway rather than put up with the discrimination they faced here), but somehow, despite the windchill factor (the average high temp in Mogadishu in January is 88 degrees; in Laos, 83 degrees), Minnesota boasts the largest concentrations of Hmong, Somali, and Karen people in the country.

Immigrants and refugees have been drawn here by family and religious groups such as Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Service that have paved the way with sponsorships and support, including international adoption: Minnesota has one of the highest international adoption rates per capita in the country, highlighted by the 15,000 Korean adoptees who’ve landed in Minnesota since the Korean War. The state’s Refugee Resettlement Programs Office and organizations such as the IIM help immigrants and refugees navigate everything from housing to health care to Minnesota Nice. And politicians ranging from Hubert H. Humphrey to George Latimer to Paul Wellstone have pushed for legislation to help immigrants and refugees.

Immigrants and refugees say they stay here for the same reasons many of us do: a welcoming, safe place with good schools and job opportunities.

To mark the occasion of our newest refugees’ arrival, we asked historians and experts (including Jane Graupman, executive director of IIM; Bill Convery, director of research at the Minnesota Historical Society; and Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong and East Asian Studies at Concordia University) to help us compile a timeline of landmarks since 1948, when the U.S. first adopted an official refugee program. (The contributions of Minnesota’s foreign-born population extend beyond refugees, of course, and further back than 1948, but this timeline focuses on people escaping war or persecution who meet the legal definition of refugee.) While our timeline isn’t intended to be comprehensive of the state’s tens of thousands of refugees, revisiting these mile markers reminds us why our instinct to welcome people in crises is so strong and so innately Minnesotan.

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1948

Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act, supposedly making way for people fleeing Europe after World War II to come to the U.S. But quotas keep the numbers of refugees able to chase the American Dream low.

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1960

U.S. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey calls out the lack of refugee relief legislation passed by Congress during the World Refugee Year, urging President Eisenhower to spend the full authorized $10 million.

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1970s

Leng Wong, the first Hmong refugee, received hateful, racist letters, and racism against refugees hasn’t stopped: When Mee Moua, the future state senator, was in junior high, some boys threw eggs at a window where she was sitting with her mom.

Fast-forward several decades, and a Hmong woman was kicked at a light rail station. The encounter was shared on social media.

Moua explained her challenges—and perseverance—in a speech: “When you’re a refugee, you know you have to keep moving or you’ll die. I kept running—chased by hate and discrimination, then to get a BA and a master’s and a JD to make me belong. I even ran for office. I ran to D.C. and became a ‘professional Asian.’ I focused on running from, so I hadn’t taken time to imagine the world I wanted to run to.”

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1975

Governor Wendell Anderson creates the Indochinese Refugee Resettlement Office, renamed the Refugee Programs Office in 1981, to streamline the work of volunteer organizations and federal agencies. A refugee task force distributes a newsletter, Minnesota New Life, in English, Vietnamese, Khmer, and Lao.

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1976

Leng Wong becomes the first Hmong person to officially arrive in Minnesota via the refugee resettlement program, one of many who had been recruited to help the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Picked to leave early on because military secrets put him in danger, Wong was referred to Minnesota by a supervisor who had attended Kennedy High School as a foreign exchange student. Wong and his family landed at MSP in February and stayed, aided by the Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church, which sponsored them.

Even though the State Department initially tried to scatter Hmong refugees across the country, Concordia’s Xiong says other families quickly joined Wong in Minnesota. “What they didn’t realize is that we naturally gravitate toward each other,” he says.

The fear of communist takeover stayed with Wong, even after he secured a job in the state Public Welfare Department’s refugee resettlement office and moved to the suburbs.

“If they come here, where do we go?” he asked a Saint Paul Dispatch reporter in 1980. 

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1976

Restaurateur and former Vietnamese Air Force fighter pilot Kim Long opens his namesake restaurant on University Ave., launching a revitalization of the crime-ridden street with immigrant and refugee businesses.

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1980

President Jimmy Carter signs the Refugee Act of 1980 into law, raising the number of refugees allowed into the country from 17,400 to 50,000, standardizing resettlement services, and expanding the definition of refugee to a person with a “well-founded fear of persecution.”

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“I was born in Ethiopia and spent my early childhood years in a refugee camp in Kenya. After 10 years in the camp, I moved to the United States in 2013. My family and I first settled in Baltimore, Maryland. I then moved to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for school. I eventually settled in Austin, Minnesota, to be closer to my community. The first time I came to the state, I realized that it’s the best place I ever lived. People are mostly kind and welcoming. We have affordable housing. We have job opportunities. If you have a vision, you will make it here, despite your skin color and economic background. I see Minnesota as a state for immigrants.”

—Oballa Oballa, city council member, Austin

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1980

May 1, 1980: Northwest Airlines flight 154 from SFO arrives at MSP’s gold concourse carrying 60 refugees from Laos, who bring along suitcases, brooms, instruments, and cooking pans. It’s just one of several such flights from Thai refugee camps as Hmong resettlement peaks in the U.S., with 27,242 people arriving in 1980. 

Many Laotians and Vietnamese also fled their countries after helping the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. About 15,000 Vietnamese refugees arrived between 1979 and 1999, along with many of Minnesota’s 15,000 Laotians.

Cambodian refugees escaped their country after the Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown in 1979, with 8,000 eventually settling in Minnesota. 

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1982

Minnesota admits 17 refugees from Ethiopia, the first African refugees to arrive in the state. They escaped political violence and famine that engulfed the country in the late 1970s and 1980s, and others continued to seek refuge in Minnesota due to extended periods of political upheaval, economic crisis, and natural disasters.

Today, at least 30,000 Ethiopians—most of whom belong to the Oromo ethnic group—call the state home. More than 80 percent of Ethiopians in the state are employed, with many holding professional jobs in sectors that include health, education, finance, and government. Those without college degrees often clean hotels and offices and attend parking lots in Minneapolis and St. Paul downtowns.

Ethiopians have established churches, mosques, small businesses, and nonprofit organizations, including Fasika Restaurant in St. Paul, where you can mop up your feast with injera (fermented flatbread); an Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Minneapolis; and Ebenezzer Ethiopian Market in Burnsville.

In 2020, Oballa Oballa becomes the first Ethiopian elected public official in Minnesota, winning a seat on the Austin City Council. He arrived in the U.S. as a refugee in 2013.

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1987

A delegation of several hundred Minnesota Jewish activists boards a flight to Washington, D.C., to attend a rally to free Jews from the Soviet Union as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sit down for their landmark summit. 

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1987

St. Paul Mayor George Latimer celebrates the Hmong community in his State of the City address: “The refugee community has been a highly motivated group of people, and many of them have become self-reliant citizens relatively quickly. People in St. Paul generally have a positive impression of the Southeast Asian community, and they are impressed with the courage and tenacity Southeast Asians have shown in adapting to a new life in a strange land.”

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1988

Jewish Russian refugees Michael and Elaine Gorodetsky and daughter Rita arrive in Minnesota after the Soviet Union, under pressure from the Reagan administration, agrees to release some refugees. The family joins other Russian-speaking refugees in the state.

Like most Russian-speaking refugees who came to Minnesota with a high level of education, Gorodetsky was fired from his job in Kuybyshev (now Samara) after he applied to leave the country. A trained mechanical engineer, he quickly finds work in his field in Minnesota.

His wife, trained in aerospace engineering, leaves her job after applying for immigration and becomes a nurse. Rita, 17, who was banned from attending medical school in Kuybyshev because of their intention to flee, enrolls at the University of Minnesota and decides to pursue a law degree at Hamline. She becomes an immigration lawyer.

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1991

Choua Lee is elected to the St. Paul School Board, becoming the first Hmong American elected to office in the U.S. Another Hmong American, Neal Thao, replaces her in 1995. Soon after, Cy Thao serves in the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 to 2010. Mee Moua serves two terms as a state senator from 2002 to 2010 and campaigns for President Barack Obama, saying afterward: “I only had to share my own personal story and let people know how much like my story his is. And it’s true what he said: This is not about Black America or white America or Asian America. It’s about the United States of America.”

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1991

Minnesota resettles its first refugee from Liberia. Today, the community’s population is about 20,000, making the state home to one of the largest Liberian communities in the country. Liberians have opened restaurants, barbershops, salons, mosques, and churches across the region, especially in Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center.

Liberians, like other African immigrants and refugees, are well-represented in the education and health sectors. They are also active participants in local and state politics, holding important seats in the municipal governments of Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, and Falcon Heights.   

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“I’m a Somali American. I came to the U.S. when I was about 6. We first resettled in New York. Then we moved to Texas, where I spent most of my life. In 2012, I made my first trip to Minnesota to help my brother and his wife, who just had a baby. I found out that there’s a huge Somali population in this state. I thought I was going to be here for a year and go back to Texas. But I fell in love with Minnesota. Next, my mom and my siblings packed their stuff to live with me here. Now, none of us thinks there’s a better place for us than Minnesota.”

—Mariam Mohamed, author and elementary school teacher, Minneapolis

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1992

Iraqi refugees begin to arrive in Minnesota as a result of violent conflicts and economic sanctions in their country. In 1990, for instance, Saddam Hussein, then president of Iraq, invades and temporarily occupies a neighboring Kuwait. The U.S. and its allies respond to the invasion with a war against Iraq. The conflict sparks humanitarian crises in the region, leading to the death of many, many Iraqi civilians and the displacement of millions more. Some of the displaced turn to the U.S. for safety.

By 2003, the number of primary Iraqi refugees in Minnesota reaches 140. During the 2003–2011 Iraq War, the number of Iraqi refugees coming to the state plunges. Then admissions of Iraqi refugees pick up again as the so-called Islamic State comes to power in Iraq.

Today, Minnesota houses an estimated 2,000 Iraqi refugees. Many of them put down roots in the Twin Cities suburbs of Fridley, Coon Rapids, and Brooklyn Park.

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1993

Bosnian refugees arrive in Minnesota after a civil war broke out in the former Yugoslavia a year earlier. Between 1993 and 2003, more than 2,300 primary refugees resettle here. They are part of about 140,000 Bosnian and Herzegovinian refugees who come to the U.S.  

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1993

Refugees from Burma arrive in Minnesota. Most of them represent an ethnic group called Karen. The Karen people have faced political persecution at the hands of the Burmese military for decades.

Today, nearly 215,000 Karen people live in the United States, 17,000 in Minnesota. While most of the Minnesotan Karen refugees live in the Twin Cities, many have moved to places like Albert Lea, Austin, Marshall, and Willmar, seeking jobs and affordable homes.

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1993

The first Somali refugees come to Minnesota two years after the collapse of the Somali government. The armed rebels who ousted the administration failed to maintain order—and the country descended into chaos and violence. Death, displacement, and famine followed. Those with some financial means to flee seek safety wherever possible.

Between 1993 and 2019, Minnesota admits more than 24,000 primary refugees from Somalia. Because many of these early refugees don’t speak English, they dominate an industry in desperate need of workers: meat-processing plants in Marshall, St. Cloud, Willmar, and other small towns across the state. Many of these Somalis—after learning the language, saving some money, and purchasing cars—establish businesses, schools, community centers, and social service organizations across the state.

Over the last three decades, Minnesota has become a destination for Somalis across the country. Today, as many as 80,000 Somali Americans live in Minnesota, making the state home to the largest Somali population in the U.S. Though most are concentrated in south Minneapolis, Somalis have branched out into small towns in greater Minnesota, including Rochester, St. Cloud, Mankato, and Willmar.

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“There has been a civil war in my country for a long time. The Burmese military tried to kill all of my people, the Karen people. That was the reason we could not live in our villages. To survive, we hid in the jungle. Living in the jungle was very difficult. So in 2000, I relocated to a refugee camp in Thailand. Eight years later, I came to North Carolina through the refugee resettlement program. Life in that state was really difficult since I didn’t speak much English. Then, my uncle told me about a Karen community in St. Paul. He said Minnesota was a good place for new refugees. So I came here and have lived here ever since.” 

—Saw Poe Thay Doh, community activist and career development officer, St. Paul

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1998

Karmel Mall opens in Minneapolis to provide the growing Somali community what traditional American malls don’t: hijab, halal food, prayer space, a sense of community, etc. It’s the largest Somali shopping center in the U.S. and one of the most important business and social hubs for the community. If you go, make sure to sample Somali tea and a sambusa.

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1098

Ten founding members establish the Minnesota Hmong Chamber of Commerce. In addition to the influx of small businesses, a 2021 study by the Minnesota Chamber Foundation finds that the overall economic contributions of immigrants and refugees outweigh the initial financial help they receive from public assistance programs. That report shows that incomes and homeownership rates of foreign-born people rise with the number of years spent in their new state, so that people who came to Minnesota before 2000 now have a homeownership rate of 64.3 percent and a median household income of $68,402.

Another report, by the New American Economy, shows that immigrants and refugees in the Minneapolis area held $1.2 billion in spending power in 2019 and paid over $284 million in federal taxes and $159 million in state and local taxes.

“Minneapolis immigrant and refugee communities continue to be an irreplaceable driving force behind our economic competitiveness,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey says of the report.

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2001

Wellstone International High School, focused on immigrants and refugees, opens in Minneapolis. Named after the late senator, who was born to Jewish refugees from Russia, the school serves newly arrived teens and is the first school in the state to provide a curriculum that’s tailored to foreign-born students who are still learning English. The school’s students speak Somali, Spanish, Oromo, Amharic, Vietnamese, Lao, French, and other languages.

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2002

The Museum of Russian Art opens in Bloomington (before moving to Minneapolis in 2005) to showcase the art and culture of Russia, including work by immigrants and refugees who came to Minnesota.

A 2016 exhibit showcases the work of Olexa Bulavitsky, a Ukrainian artist who was drafted into the Soviet army during WWII, escaped German capture, and landed in a displaced person’s camp in Bavaria. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1950, Bulavitsky continued his art career in Minnesota until he died in 2001.

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2006

Concordia University becomes the first place in the world where students can get a Hmong studies minor.

Once Concordia’s program proves popular, St. Catherine University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire follow suit with similar programs.

“It gave other people the courage to launch theirs,” Xiong says. “Now everyone wants to do one.”

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2008

The Karen Organization of Minnesota, located in Roseville, becomes a nonprofit agency that provides social and employment services to Karen refugees, serving more than 3,000 clients each year.  

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2008

Paye Flomo becomes the first Liberian American elected to public office in the United States as mayor of Hampton, Minnesota, population 700. 

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2010

Hussein Samatar becomes the first Somali American elected official in the United States after winning a seat on the Minneapolis school board. He passes away at age 45 in 2013.

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2013

A record 40,000 people attend the Hmong New Year celebration at Roy Wilkins Auditorium. The weekend-long festival features old traditions, such as a ball-toss courtship ritual, in addition to newer traditions, including break dancing, hip-hop, and a Miss Hmong Minnesota pageant.

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2013

The Somali Museum of Minnesota is established. It’s the first and the only museum in the U.S. that focuses on the preservation of traditional Somali culture. The museum now offers, among other things, classes on how to weave traditional rugs and baskets.     

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2015

The groundbreaking ceremony for a “Secret War” memorial is held at the State Capitol, honoring the Hmong and Lao veterans whose service was essential to the U.S. during the war.

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2016

Chef Yia Vang opens Union Kitchen as a pop-up restaurant—later changing the name to Union Hmong Kitchen—where he often serves a twist on tater tot hotdish. His includes Hmong pork sausage infused with ginger, lemongrass, fish sauce, local root vegetables, and coconut curry.

Vang, who was born in a Thai refugee camp, wins local awards, including being named Chef of the Year by this magazine in 2019.  

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“I came to the U.S. in 1997 seeking asylum. I first lived in Atlanta, Georgia. It wasn’t easy to work and study. There were no opportunities. Then I heard Minnesota was a good place for students in terms of housing affordability. After less than a year in Atlanta, I decided to move to Minneapolis. By then, there was a tight-knit Somali community. If you were new to the city, other Somalis would give you all the information you needed. This is where you can study, this is where you can live, this is where you work—and that’s what I needed. Many decades later, Minnesota is still home. This is where I spent most of my adult life.”

—Abdirahman Kahin, CEO, Afro Deli, Minneapolis    

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2016

State Representative Fue Lee is elected, becoming the first Hmong American to represent Minneapolis at the Capitol. Lee was born in a Thai refugee camp and arrived in the U.S. in 1992.   

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2017-2020

The number of refugees coming to Minnesota plunges as the Trump administration cuts the number of refugees allowed entry to the U.S. and almost entirely stops arrivals from Somalia.

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2017

From October 1, 2017, through February 2018, about 240 refugees arrive in the state, down from 1,180 during the same period the previous year.

“You can imagine the heartbreak that we saw for four years, because families had applied for their children or spouses to come through the refugee program and all of a sudden, boom, it just came to an abrupt stop,” Graupman says.•“Families were getting on airplanes at the beginning of the Trump administration—after they had been processed, which takes almost two years—and they were getting ready to depart for the U.S. when they had to turn around and go back to refugee camps. We had people for four years coming to the office sobbing, and there was nothing we could do to help them.”

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2018

Ilhan Omar is elected U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, becoming the first Somali American to serve in Congress, the state’s first woman of color representative, and, along with Rashida Tlaib, a first Muslim woman in Congress.

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2018

Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis drops its refugee resettlement program, citing the decline in refugees.

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2019

Sahan Journal, a nonprofit news outlet that covers refugees, immigrants, and communities of color, launches in Minnesota. Mukhtar Ibrahim, who was born in Somalia, founded the organization after working as a reporter for the Star Tribune and MPR News. Sahan has become an important source of news about the state’s immigrant and refugee communities, providing much information about COVID-19 and the politics and policies that affect the community and winning a national contest for innovative local journalism in 2020.

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“There was a civil war going on in my country, Liberia, when I was a baby. So my family fled to a refugee camp in Ivory Coast. Some years later, I came to Minnesota. I was about 6 years old. I grew up in north Minneapolis. Minnesota means a lot to me. I’ve spent most of my life here in Minnesota. It’s what I know, what I’m used to. I got used to the culture, the rhythm, the flow of things. I’ve been fortunate enough to really establish myself in this state. I have a family now. I have my own home. As a former refugee, having something that I can call my own is very, very important to me—and I’ve been able to create that here in Minnesota. So for those reasons, Minnesota is a very important place to me.”  

—Yakasah Wehyee, city council member, Falcon Heights

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2021

Hundreds of Hmong friends and family gather at Brothers Event Center in Oakdale on an early morning in July to watch as Sunisa Lee wins the individual all-around gold medal in gymnastics at the Tokyo Olympics, catapulting the Hmong community into the international limelight.

“A lot of people don’t know what being Hmong is,” Lee’s sister, Shyenne, says. “It’s nice having people finally learn who we are.”

Lee’s parents, who fled Laos as children for refugee camps in Thailand before landing in St. Paul, encouraged Sunisa from a young age, but it’s also possible that the Hmong culture, which traditionally values flexibility and acrobatics, played a role in her success. At Hmong New Year celebrations, Lee’s cousins would “tumble and flip and fly through the air” at the annual dancing competition, according to Sia Lo, an attorney and relative of the Lees.•“It means everything to the Hmong community,” Lo tells the Washington Post in July. “Yesterday we were fighting with the U.S. secret army in Southeast Asia, becoming refugees. And today we are also your doctors and lawyers and, now, Olympic champions. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

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2021

The first 35 refugees from Afghanistan settle into new homes in Minnesota.

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2021

Nordstrom debuts a line of luxury hijab by Minnetonka entrepreneur Hilal Ibrahim. It is not the state’s first foray into the specialty hijab market: Ibrahim has also developed hijab designed for medical workers, and in 2017, a Minnesota company called Asiya was one of the first to sell athletic hijab.

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Originally published in the November 2021 issue.