ETHNIC DIVERSITY – CAMBODIAN AMERICAN IN USA/COMMANDER MICHAEL MISIEWICZ
PareByokeLIVING IN HARMONY AND DEVELOPMENT. US CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES NON DISCRIMINATION AS TO ETHNIC ORIGIN, RACE, …
EVEN PERMANENT RESIDENTS AKA GREEN CARD HOLDERS (BURMA WOULD CALL THEM FRC’s OR FOREIGN NATIONALS) ENJOY NEARLY ALL THE RIGHTS OF A US CITIZEN, EXCEPT NOTABLY VOTING. THEY CAN SERVE IN THE US MILITARY, TOO.
CHILDREN BORN IN USA FROM ILLEGALS ARE AUTOMATICALLY AND LEGALLY RECOGNIZED AS US CITIZENS. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A SECOND CLASS OR THIRD CLASS CITIZENS OR ASSOCIATE CITIZENS.
37 years after escaping killing fields, a Cambodian returns as US Navy commander
Cambodia
US Navy Cmdr. Michael Misiewicz watched today as relatives prepared to board his destroyer, which was docked a few miles off the shore of Cambodia. He had not seen any of them since he left the Southeast Asian nation as a boy 37 years ago, escaping civil war and the murderous Khmer Rouge.
The commander’s face was impassive at first, but it softened as more and more extended family members were helped onto the barge below him. Then he saw his aunt, now 72, who had helped him leave for the US so many years ago. Commander Misiewicz walked slowly down the metal stairs and they embraced, weeping.
“When I saw her this morning,” he later told reporters on the ship, “I just couldn’t hold back the tears, I was so happy that she was here. It’s been a very long time.”
The USS Mustin, which arrived in Cambodia Friday, is on a four-day goodwill mission that includes meetings with the Cambodian Navy and community service projects. Misiewicz made it clear that he places his duties as captain first, but also said that he had been “overwhelmed” by emotions upon his return.
Escaping the Khmer Rouge
Now 43, Misiewicz was born Vannak Khem in the rice fields outside Phnom Penh. As a child, he spent some days watching movies and playing games at the house of his future adoptive mother, Maryna Lee Misiewicz, a US embassy employee for whom his aunt worked as a maid. As the civil war between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge worsened, his aunt and father arranged for her to adopt him, and they left for the US in 1973…..
US Navy commander returns to Cambodian roots
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/05/AR2010120501022.html
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 5, 2010; 4:14 AM
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia — The distant thuds of gunfire and bombs weren’t nearly as memorable for Michael Misiewicz as fishing barehanded with his older brother in Cambodia’s Mekong River.
In 1973, as a 6-year-old then called Vannak Khem, he was more concerned with boys’ games than the deepening war – unaware, like most Cambodians, of the trauma that the Khmer Rouge would soon inflict on the country. He had no idea that after his adoption by an American woman that same year, it would take him 37 years to go home.
Misiewicz finally returned home Friday as commander of the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Mustin – reuniting with the relatives who wondered whether they would ever see him alive, and the aunt who helped arrange his adoption. His ship departs Monday.
“Chumreap suor, Om,” he greeted 72-year-old Samrith Sokha in the Khmer language, clutching her in a sobbing embrace on the Mustin’s sea-swept walkway. “Greetings, Auntie.”
The warship has a larger mission: to help the United States as it deepens ties with Cambodia and other nearby nations in a region overshadowed by China’seconomic and military clout.
But the ship’s arrival in the port of Sihanoukville also ends an odyssey that took Misiewicz, now 43, from the poverty of Cambodian rice fields to the farmlands of the midwestern United States to the helm of a U.S. destroyer.
The process of returning has been intensely emotional, he said: sadness for the more than 1.7 million who died or were killed by the communist Khmer Rouge when they held power in 1975-1979, combined with guilt at his escape from it and joy at seeing the relatives who helped him leave it behind……
Is This A Great Country Or What? – Swampland – TIME.com
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/03/is-this-a-great-country-or-what/
Cambodian-Born Commander Visits His Homeland
http://www.c7f.navy.mil/news/2010/12-december/003.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/05/AR2010120501022.html