Category: Новини

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Seattle — The National Archives at Seattle keeps 50,000 records from the Chinese Exclusion Act era that banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States. Volunteers working on the documents find stories of resilience and some find details of their family’s past.

A group of volunteers has been gathering each week at the Seattle archives to index thousands of documents from the Chinese Exclusion Act years. Volunteers say they never know what kind of drama the files will reveal. It may be an intrusive questioning of a woman about her pregnancy, or a letter from a husband to the detention center authorities, asking to transfer money to his wife.

“No, they’re not happy, but at least the story is there,” said genealogist and historian Trish Hackett Nicola. She has been volunteering with the National Archives project for more than 20 years, sharing some of the stories on the project’s blog.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States and prevented those already in the country from becoming naturalized citizens. It was repealed in 1943. The National Archives at Seattle holds more than 50,000 files spanning over 60 years, documenting Chinese people entering or leaving the country.

“Immigration did interrogations, which obviously changed over the course of the exclusion period,” said Valerie Szwaya, director of archival operations at the National Archives at Seattle. “And they got substantially more detailed as the time period for exclusion went on.”

Volunteer Rhonda Farrar was motivated to join the project to resolve mysteries in her own family’s past. As she works with the files, she discovers that sometimes the questions are intrusive, she said, and sometimes they are mundane.

“They’ll ask you how many mirrors you have in the house back home in China, where you sleep, and where do you keep your rice,” Farrar said.

Sometimes, they are about family.

Farrar’s father, Edwin Law, died when she was a teenager. She found a file on him as she was working on a file from the last years of the Act. The file misspelled his name as “Low Yow Edwin.” He was interrogated at the beginning of World War II as he left the U.S. to serve as a fighter-pilot mechanic in China’s military. Finding his file came as a surprise.

“My job that day was just to go through the file and input the name that I saw on the header into the computer,” she said. “This file was sitting on the very end of this box. I thought, ‘That looks kind of close to my dad’s name.’ I opened it up and there was a picture of him, at age 23, staring me in the face. I physically started shaking, I had tears, it was just unbelievable. It really helped to bring everything together for me.”

Lily Eng found the files of several family members, including her great-grandfather, who went by the name of “Hop Lee.”

“We had no pictures; my grandfather never spoke about him,” Eng said. “Only after I got the immigration files, I realized that my great-grandfather had died in 1918, so my grandfather had never met him. His father had returned to America before my grandfather was born.”

Joyce Liu, who joined the project as a volunteer a year ago, said the stories revealed through the files made her appreciate the resilience of the earlier generation of Chinese people who came to America.

“I look at the tidbits of their lives, and it looks tough,” she said. “An arrival form of a mom who came back with her son from China that says that her son died on board of the ship … I was shocked. I mean, the mom must be devastated. It also dawned on me, how long was that voyage from the southern China to Seattle?”

Liu sees the Chinese people who arrived in America during the Chinese Exclusion Act period as pioneers.

“The history can really help us put things in perspective as a Chinese American here, and I just hope that history doesn’t repeat itself,” she said.
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Washington — The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday against two people and their Russia-based companies it accused of supporting a Kremlin-directed disinformation campaign involving the impersonation of legitimate news websites.

The sanctions targeted Moscow-based company Social Design Agency and its founder, Ilya Andreevich Gambashidze, as well as the Russian-based Company Group Structura and its owner, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Tupikin, according to a statement from the Treasury Department.

On behalf of the Russian government, they handled a network of more than 60 websites that mimicked media organizations and used fake social media accounts to amplify their content, the statement said.

“The fake websites appeared to have been built to carefully mimic the appearance of legitimate news websites,” the Treasury Department said.

“The fake websites included embedded images and working links to legitimate sites.”

The sanctions come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, now in its third year.

The United States has repeatedly accused Moscow of orchestrating what it calls global “malign influence campaigns” aimed at sowing instability in democratic countries.

Last October, a U.S. intelligence report said Russia was using its spy network, state-run media and social media to undermine public trust in elections around the world.

The United States shared the report with some 100 countries.

“We are committed to exposing Russia’s extensive campaigns of government-directed deception, which are intended to mislead voters and undermine trust in democratic institutions in the United States and around the world,” Brian E. Nelson, under-secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, was quoted as saying in Wednesday’s statement.

U.S.-based disinformation researchers say hundreds of sites mimicking news outlets — powered by artificial intelligence — have cropped up in recent months, fueling an explosion of false narratives, about subjects ranging from war to politicians.

That includes several Russian-linked websites mimicking news outlets and pushing Kremlin propaganda ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, according to researchers at Clemson University and the watchdog organization NewsGuard.
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Five U.S. states held presidential primaries Tuesday. The presumptive nominees, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, have achieved enough votes to secure their party nominations. Former President Trump voted in his home state of Florida. That’s where VOA senior Washington correspondent Carolyn Presutti is and tells us where that state stands on a big issue, immigration.
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McALLEN, Texas — A law that would allow Texas law enforcement to arrest migrants suspected of illegally entering the U.S. is back on hold.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Tuesday issued an order preventing its enforcement, just hours after the Supreme Court allowed the strict new immigration law to take effect.

The Justice Department is challenging the law, saying Texas is overstepping the federal government’s immigration authority. Texas argues it has a right to take action over what the governor has described as an “invasion” of migrants on the border.

Here’s what to know:

Who can be arrested? 

The law would allow any Texas law enforcement officer to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Once in custody, migrants could either agree to a Texas judge’s order to leave the U.S. or be prosecuted on misdemeanor charges of illegal entry. Migrants who don’t leave could face arrest again under more serious felony charges.

Arresting officers must have probable cause, which could include witnessing the illegal entry or seeing it on video. 

The law cannot be enforced against people lawfully present in the U.S., including those who were granted asylum or who are enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Critics, including Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, fear the law could lead to racial profiling and family separation.

American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Texas and some neighboring states issued a travel advisory a day after Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law. The advisory warns of a possible threat to civil and constitutional rights when passing through Texas. 

Abbott has rejected concerns over profiling. While signing the bill, he said troopers and National Guard members at the border can see migrants crossing illegally “with their own eyes.”

Where would the law be enforced? 

The law can be enforced in any of Texas’ 254 counties, including those hundreds of miles from the border. 

But Republican state Rep. David Spiller, the law’s author, has said he expects most arrests would occur within 80 kilometers of the U.S.-Mexico border. Texas’ state police chief has expressed similar expectations.

Some places are off-limits. Arrests cannot be made in public and private schools, places of worship, or hospitals and other health care facilities, including those where sexual assault forensic examinations are conducted.

It is unclear where migrants ordered to leave might go. The law says they are to be sent to ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, even if they are not Mexican citizens. However, Mexico’s government said Tuesday it would not accept the return of any migrants to its territory from the state of Texas.

Is the law constitutional? 

The Supreme Court’s decision did not address the constitutionality of the law.

The Justice Department, legal experts and immigrant rights groups have said it is a clear conflict with the U.S. government’s authority to regulate immigration.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, agreed in a 114-page order. He added that the law could hamper U.S. foreign relations and treaty obligations.

Opponents have called the measure the most dramatic attempt by a state to police immigration since a 2010 Arizona law — denounced by critics as the “Show Me Your Papers” bill — that was largely struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Ezra cited the Supreme Court’s 2012 Arizona ruling in his decision.

Texas has argued that the law mirrors federal law instead of conflicting with it. 

What is happening on the border? 

Arrests for illegal crossings along the southern border fell by half in January from record highs in December. Border Patrol officials attributed the shift to seasonal declines and heightened enforcement by the U.S. and its allies. The federal government has not yet released numbers for February.

Texas has charged thousands of migrants with trespassing on private property under a more limited operation that began in 2021.

Tensions remain between Texas and the Biden administration. In the border city of Eagle Pass, Texas, National Guard members have prevented Border Patrol agents from accessing a riverfront park.

Other Republican governors have expressed support for Abbott, who has said the federal government is not doing enough to enforce immigration laws. Other measures implemented by Texas include a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and razor wire along the border.
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President Biden has asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send a team to Washington to “discuss ways to target Hamas without a major ground operation in Rafah.” Netanyahu insists that going into Rafah is the only way to destroy Hamas. Linda Gradstein reports for VOA from Jerusalem. Camera: Ricki Rosen.
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Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin says the United States remains determined to provide Ukraine with the resources to fight Russian aggression, even as the U.S. Congress has failed to pass supplemental aid for Ukraine. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb traveled to Ramstein Air Base in Germany with the secretary.
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The migrant crisis in New York City, which began nearly two years ago with an influx of Venezuelans and other Latin Americans, has seen a tripling in the number of migrants from West African nations in the past year. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
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Washington — Donald Trump’s legal team on Tuesday filed a U.S. Supreme Court brief in his bid for criminal immunity, arguing that a former president enjoys “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts.”

The case is to be argued before the justices on April 25.

Trump has appealed a lower court’s rejection of his request to be shielded from the criminal case being pursued by Special Counsel Jack Smith because he was serving as president when he took the actions at the center of the case. Trump is charged with trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.

The filing advances arguments similar to ones Trump’s lawyers previously have made and echoes statements he has made on the campaign trail as he seeks to regain the presidency.  

Trump, the first former president to be criminally prosecuted, is the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election. Biden defeated Trump in 2020.

Smith was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022. In August 2023, Smith brought four federal criminal counts against Trump in the election subversion case, including conspiring to defraud the United States, obstructing the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral victory and conspiring to do so, and conspiring against the right of Americans to vote.

In a filing to the justices in February, Smith sought to make the case against presidential immunity.

“The nation has a compelling interest in seeing the charges brought to trial,” Smith said in the filing, adding that “the public interest in a prompt trial is at its zenith where, as here, a former president is charged with conspiring to subvert the electoral process so that he could remain in office.”

The Supreme Court’s decision to hear arguments on Trump’s immunity bid next month postponed the trial, giving him a boost as he tries to delay prosecutions while running to regain the presidency. Trump has three other pending criminal cases. He has pleaded not guilty in all four cases, seeking to paint them as politically motivated.

Trump last October sought to have the charges dismissed based on his claim of immunity. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected that claim in December.  

On appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Feb. 6 ruled 3-0 against Trump’s immunity claim, rejecting his bid for “unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralize the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results.”

The case once again thrusts the nation’s top judicial body, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, into the election fray.

Trump and his allies made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and devised a plan to use false electors to thwart congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Trump also sought to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence not to allow certification to go forward. Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a bid to prevent the certification.

If Trump regains the presidency, he could seek to use his powers to force an end to the prosecution or potentially pardon himself for any federal crimes.
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