 good morning and good afternoon. Welcome to a nation of immigrants. America represents something universal in the human spirit. President Reagan once said, I received a letter not long ago from a man who said you can go to Japan to live but you cannot become Japanese. You can go to France to live but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go live in Germany or Turkey and you only become German or Turk. But then he added, anybody from any corner of the world can come to America and live and become an American. Today's guest is Sia He, Executive Director of Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans. Sia has been Executive Director of the Council since 2013. Before joining the Council, Sia served as Education and Training Department Manager for the Mount American partnership and as a campaign manager for the successful St. Paul Public Schools, Strong School, Strong Communities, Levy Referendum. Sia holds a master's degree in public policy from the Huber-Honfrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, and a bachelor's degree in political science from McLeod-Steer College. Sia managed all operations and projects and develops and implements strategic and well-informed plans to ensure the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans on its statutory duties. Welcome, Sia. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. I'm just honored to be here and very much looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, I'm so thrilled you agreed to be on the show because we technically are colleagues. You are the Executive Director of the Council. I'm a board member of the Council. I've been working with you for several past few years, but because we were so busy with the project, we really had a chance to sit down and just talk about something else, not about the Council. Today, we're going to talk about a lot of something else. We are not focused on our work. So, first and foremost, happy President's Day. Yeah, it's wonderful. We can have this conversation on President's Day. Now, my first question to you would be, who is your favorite President of the United States? A very simple question. I'm ready to answer. And my answer is President Abe Lincoln. And the simple reason for why he is my favorite President is, you know, I mean, most people would say, well, he carried the nation through, you know, he saved the nation. But I would say, you know, my main reason for identifying him as my favorite President has to do with the fact that he is just simply the greatest orator of our time. I mean, you know, of all of our Presidents, he just simply has the ability to magically piece words together that I haven't quite seen in any other living human being. I mean, in any other being, you know, like, whether it's in history or in modern day, like in present day life. Very well said. You know, it's what you just said remind me of something. You know, I had a great honor to work for President Jimmy Carter once when he visited China, I served as his interpreter for the day. And to be honest, you know, you know, it's a kind of cliche that President Carter is a profound, you know, wonderful human being. But as a President, he's not ranked on the top. I just, I do not want to comment on this, you know, ranking, but President Carter is definitely one of my favorite Presidents in the United States because my judgment is very, my standard is very simple. A leader, a national leader must be profoundly human of the strong capability of empathy and to understand people. And President Carter is, I couldn't find any other, you know, parallel to reach the level of community of President Carter. Yeah, but I do not want to digress. Let's come back to you. I do, you know, you are a second generation among American, correct? The second generation. So you were born in the United States. I know, I thought about that. So, but you know, this is to your point earlier about the fact that we have been colleagues for several years, but haven't really had the opportunity to really learn about one another's journey. So I think this is a prime opportunity. I was actually born in Laos at the end of 1981, you know, about six years, almost seven years after the end of the Vietnam War. And my parents brought me through Thailand and then into the United States. And when we arrived, I, I remember that I was four because I wasn't old enough to go to kindergarten. I had to wait one more school year before I could officially attend school with my older sister. Oh my, oh my goodness. So you are technically a first generation. Yeah, to tell us a little bit more about your family and your parents in particular. So my parents, ethnically speaking, I am Hmong. You know, my parents are, you know, they're, they're, you know, survivors of a war. So the Southeast Asian conflict, you know, in mainstream America, we talk about the conflict that's the Vietnam War. But, you know, everyone in the Hmong American community, and I think that many in the state of Minnesota recognize that there was a war within a war. And that, you know, war within the war is a secret war in Laos. And so my parents, you know, the Hmong were an ally of the United States. And when the United States withdrew in the summer of 1975, that left the Hmong vulnerable to the consequences of being on the losing side in that war. And so my parents, along with tens of thousands of other Hmong made the dangerous journey, you know, or the exodus out of Laos by crossing the river into Thailand. And, you know, we lived in the refugee camps for a couple of years and then came to the United States. My parents were in the early 20s when they arrived in the United States in the late 1980s. They brought my older sister, myself, and two younger sisters who were both born in the refugee camps of Thailand. We originally were resettled in California. And then in 1997, my parents made the decision to relocate us to Minnesota. Is there any particular reason your family relocated in Minnesota? Yes, absolutely. And, you know, it has to do with why, you know, my entire family is still here in the state of Minnesota, why we choose to call this state home. We grew up in California, quite, you know, disadvantaged. Obviously, my parents were survivors of a war, you know, incredibly traumatized. You know, they had seen most of their family members either killed during the war or left behind in the attempted escapes to cross the river into Thailand. And so, although they were quite young and one would assume that they were capable of many things, refugees, you know, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. And so, we, when we were living in California, my parents heard stories of the Great Midwest. And obviously, you know, there was a good concentration of who had been resettled here by, you know, organizations like Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services. And so, we had some relatives who had been resettled here, either primary resettlement or secondary and tertiary migration. And so, we had heard stories that here in the Midwest, the, you know, the Hmong parents who were limited in English proficiency, you know, could at least, you know, attain jobs in the manufacturing companies. And those jobs meant, you know, some relatively stable form of income that then allowed them to, you know, purchase homes. And, you know, you and I know very well what that means, right? Stable income, stable home, meaning that, you know, parents could eventually open doors to opportunities that would otherwise never be open for their children. And so, living in California, my parents had heard these stories about Minnesota. And so, in 1997, my parents made the decision to relocate us, you know, given what they had heard about the Midwest, but also given some very, you know, tragic and personal reasons directly related to who my parents are as individuals and as a collective. And so, my parents moved us to Minnesota. And I would have to say, Chang, that, you know, the first best decision my parents made in their lives as my parents was the decision to come to America. And then their next best decision was to relocate us from California to the great state of Minnesota. I can't imagine that my life would be what it is today if I, you know, had been nurtured in a place other than this great state. You know, that Buddhist saying of, you know, like, you can't grow rice in the desert, you know, Minnesota is a place where, you know, our public and private and nonprofit leaders have collectively created the conditions that then allowed children like myself, you know, from incredibly disadvantaged families to, you know, grow up and eventually overcome the circumstances of their birth, right? And that's the American dream in play. And, you know, this great state of Minnesota has just been incredibly fertile grounds, you know, for many, you Americans, myself included. But I want to call out the fact that I am a refugee and the conditions that are necessary to ensure that a refugee experienced child grows up and succeeds, calls for more resources than, you know, we would ask for in a situation where we're talking about an immigrant child, right? Because there are such stark differences between immigrants and refugees. Absolutely. And thank you so much for sharing the story. It is profoundly touching. Please say hi to your parents for me. I know, absolutely. You know, recently, United States citizenship and immigration services, USCIS, just to change the mission statement. The USCIS as a federal agency has long standing no status as the like front line of United States as a nation of immigrants. I mean, recognize that. But during the Trump administration that was changed, deleted a nation of immigrants from their mission statement. But recently, they didn't put that word by word back, but it changed the mission statement to a nation of welcome. So even there was some turbulence or, you know, uncertainty at the federal level, but we are proud and very lucky to be in the state of Minnesota. A great state has always been a state of welcome. And we have one of the strongest American community here. We have four legislators, right? We have six now. I think that everybody should be proud of it, and we have very strong Somalian community, and we have very strong Tibetan community, and we have also many strong other ethnic groups. So the among American and the Somali American, they were, you know, benefited from this national spirit, the nation of immigrants, a nation of welcome. But there are different, you know, perspectives and different viewpoints. So a last year or, you know, during the pandemic, there was a candidate for US Senate in Delaware, and she tweeted, most third world migrants cannot assimilate into civil societies. Pro me wrong. One of my favorite author, Vietnamese American author, Viet Nam Nguyen, replied on Twitter, third world refugee here. I have a PhD in English, and I won a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. What have you done? We can also reply to this candidate and just to show her what you have done. You know, this is a former refugee immigrant to the United States four years old, came here with nothing, but ended with a master degree in public affairs and a bachelor degree in political science. And she managed one of the most important ethnic minority agencies in the state of Minnesota. What have you done? We can ask that candidate. But I know you probably have some thoughts on that. I don't want to put you in a difficult position as to rebut this kind of, you know, hate speech. But my question to you is what exactly is a simulation? And what exactly is diversity and inclusion from your perspective? Yeah, so, you know, so many thoughts came to mind while you were sharing about this candidate for public office. What a tragedy that she simply is so ignorant, because we have plenty of examples that would contradict her perspective. So diversity and inclusion for me means, you know, the intentional practices that go toward ensuring that people from different walks of life, you know, including sexual orientation, disability status, race, ethnicity, gender, right, that they feel valued and that they are made, they are empowered to believe that they have something to contribute to a larger endeavor. And, you know, so that's in a nutshell my definition of diversity and inclusion. I think that we as a state and as a nation, we're doing a better job of having these conversations, trying to arrive at a shared understanding of what diversity and inclusion means. We are obviously far away, far distance from getting it right. But we are better, we're doing better now, whether it's in the private sector or in government. We're doing better now than we were 10 years ago, even I was here during the Dayton administration. And I recall that that was when the Dayton administration, you know, began putting in a very concerted effort to mobilize, you know, the governor's cabinet members around this initiative. And so, but I want to, you know, just go back to, you know, the comment that this candidate made about peoples, about their world, people and their inability to assimilate in a cultural rate. You know, worse things were said about the Hmong in the 70s and 80s, when, you know, the world was contemplating whether, you know, and where to resettle these, you know, really backwards looking people, right? Those were some of the colorful phrases that were used to describe the Hmong because they were an ethnic hill tribe, largely concentrated in the mountainous regions of Laos, you know, in the Sengkwong province. And when the Southeast Asian conflict ended, you know, the images that came out from the refugee camps of Thailand were definitely not images of people who were educated and were prepared to take on jobs in the United States, right? And so far worse comments have been made about the Hmong. And yet we know that this community that arrived in this country with nothing but pain and sorrow and grief and, you know, the clothes on their backs, this community has succeeded beyond our imaginations and has succeeded beyond even what my elders, you know, my parents and their parents, what they ever imagined for us. As, you know, descendants of the Hmong, right? And so I, you know, not only do we have six Hmong ancestry legislators in the Minnesota House of Representatives and Senate, Minnesota, you know, probably sent to MIT the first, you know, candidate for, you know, an aerodynamics degree who is among ancestry. In fact, he came out of the east side of St. Paul, you know, and went to MIT and then Ann Arbor and came out of both institutions with degrees in aerodynamics engineering, right? And is by, you know, based on his academic background and his, you know, professional experiences is a rocket science scientist. You know, we don't breed, you know, like rocket scientists like we breed apples, right? But, you know, like this is, like I said, when we first started this interview, if the conditions are right, if opportunities are made available, if children know what opportunities exist for them, if, you know, that idea of it takes an entire village, you know, children can grow up to be, you know, to assimilate and accultrate beyond our wildest imaginations. And that's what that in and of itself is, you know, the hope that inspires not only the people living within the territorial boundaries of the United States, but that's actually the hope, the beacon of light that inspires people from all corners of the world. You know, and when it comes to the Hmong, I mean, St. Paul, Minnesota is the city on the hill. If you are of Hmong ancestry, doesn't matter if you're in China or in Laos or Burma or Vietnam, you know St. Paul, Minnesota, you know Minnesota, because this has become home to the most progressive, the most educated, the most, you know, economically well off community of Americans of Hmong ancestry. And, you know, that, you know, in the 1970s and mid-80s and even into the 1990s, you know, most people looking at the Hmong American community couldn't and wouldn't have forced it, this kind of development for a community that was considered, you know, highly, you know, that was thought of as highly incapable of assimilating and occult trading because we were too primitive looking at the time. Wonderful to hear it. Thank you so much for sharing the, you know, I kind of, you know, as a Minnesota, I just, you know, appreciated this very strong presence of, you know, Hmong community and everybody enjoying, you know, you know, Vietnamese and Hmong community, the culture and diversity and the food that you have to offer. But, you know, there are very, you know, moving and touching cultural history and the story behind it. But also, yeah. Cheng, I think that is the beauty of our community, you know, and that's really what inspires me in my role as executive director of the council. You know, we're home to large, a large community of Asian Indians. Our Chinese community is, you know, not only large, but it is so integral to key institutions to, you know, in Minnesota, such as the Mayo Clinic, right, and the University of Minnesota. And all of our different ancestry communities combined together to make Minnesota's API community just incredibly vibrant. And, you know, I've been in several national calls with API orgs. And I am still surprised to hear them say that they're surprised that Minnesota has such a large and robust Asian American and Pacific Islander community. And we are made up of more than just the Hmong. Yeah, it's interesting. This is a question I keep asking myself, why Saito Minnesota? You know, you talk to my friends and family back in China. So very few of them heard of Minnesota. They believe all the Chinese Americans are in California or New York. And so why Minnesota? I keep asking myself, is something in Minnesota just to touch my inner spirit? I cannot articulate what exactly that is. What is it? Can you try to explain it? I am absolutely prepared to answer that question because it is my job to answer questions like that from other Minnesotans. So for each of our communities, the answer may differ slightly, right? So I'll just give you two examples. Between 2000 and 2010, the fastest growing community under our umbrella was the Asian Indian community. They came to Minnesota for jobs in the STEM field, so jobs at Metronik, Boston Scientific, Ecolab, 3M. So that's the jobs at these corporate institutions. So that's our Asian Indian community. When we looked at our newer emerging refugee community, so for example, our Korean community, which is an ethnic group from Burma, Minnesota is home to one of the largest communities of Korean refugees. And so for that community, coming to Minnesota was because of resettlement organizations like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services, obviously. But once primary resettlement is over with, people then also engage in secondary and tertiary migration. And those journeys are propelled and compelled by what they have heard while they are living in other states. And that's that Minnesota has an incredibly strong nonprofit sector, philanthropic sector. Our public schools are second to none, particularly in terms of their ability and their capacity to take on the challenges that are unique to ESL learners, refugee and immigrant populations. And so those were the very practical reasons for why these populations who, for the most part, in their native countries are tropical locations. But then they would relocate themselves to a place that right now in the middle of winter, it feels like we're living in the tundra. Nonetheless, we are home to these fast-growing immigrant and refugee communities from Asia. And the reason, again, has to do with the fact. And I think one current parent put it best to us. She said, after having lived in the refugee camps for decades, having, you know, wondering whether the future will be any different for my children, enduring the cold in Minnesota is nothing compared to enduring hopelessness in the refugee camps. That is the best answer to the question, why Minnesota? And it's a tribute to the decisions that we as leaders in government and in various sectors, including the corporate sector, decisions that we have collectively made that have resulted in a Minnesota that is fertile grounds for people who come here with nothing but hopes and dreams. Thank you so much. Yeah, that's exactly the answer I was looking for. Now I have my own answer. I choose to stay in Minnesota because of people like you, because of people like Judge Tony Leong, and because of people like David Maida. And this is just a home. We are running out of time, but we are starting a new segment of recommendations and advice. So two quick questions. And so we will wrap up. And if you were giving some advice to yourself in your early twenties, what would you say? Be patient. Be patient. Very good advice. When I was a kid growing up, I, you know, was, I mean, I've always been a fan of history. And I thought that Alexander the Great became Alexander the Great at the age of 25. And so I thought I've got to be as great as Alexander the Great by the time I get to the Grand Old Age of 25. And, you know, so I spent my early 20s just like tunnel visioned and focused on achieving a certain profile, you know, that was fitting to my parents' perspective of what success looks like. And so, you know, to your question, I would say, be patient and enjoy life. You know, when you come of age, whether you want to or not, the weight of the world and the challenges facing the world and one's communities, you can't escape from that. There will be a place and a time when you will be called on to take on the responsibility of helping to address those challenges. So, you know, there's a place and time for everything. But in your 20s, try to make sure that you're enjoying life. And, you know, if you are destined for, you know, specific roles and responsibilities, in time they will, you'll find yourself there. So I would just say be patient. Wonderful advice. Thank you so much. It's a great honor and a privilege to have this conversation with you, with Sink Tank Hawaii. And thank you for spending time with us. And thank you for sharing your story with our audience. Yes, I see her Executive Director of Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans. This is a nation of immigrants. Thank you, I'll see you. Thank you, Cheng, for having me. Have a wonderful day and happy President's Day. Happy President's Day.