In a mind-bogglingly bizarre and infuriating incident out of the deep blue state of Minnesota, voters have elected a new mayor who previously admitted, back in the summer of this year, to living illegally with her family in the United States. Despite that admission, she was neither arrested and deported nor rejected by the city’s voters.
That new mayor-elect of St. Paul, Minnesota is State Rep. Kaohly Vang Her (D). Mayor-elect Her spoke in June, during a speech delivered on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives, about how she is here illegally because of how her family arrived in America from Laos. She admitted that her father defrauded the American immigration system.
Despite that, Vang Her beat out incumbent Melvin Carter in the fight over the mayoral seat in St. Paul, and as such is becoming the city’s first female and first Asian mayor. Both she and Carter are members of the state’s Democratic Party apparatus, which is called the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota.
Announcing her victory, which appears to have come because voters were dissatisfied with the state of the city after Carter’s two terms, Vang Her said, “Here is my commitment to you: As your mayor, I will always show up. We are a large city, but a small community. Being involved matters. How we run our government matters. How we show up for people — in every corner of our city — matters.”
She also obliquely commented on her immigration status, though avoiding the illegal alien part of it this time around. She said, “My family came here as refugees. Never in their wildest dreams would I be standing here today accepting the position of mayor.”
Back in June, commenting in more detail in that immigration status, Vang Her said, “I would like for you to put a face to the name, a face to what it is that we are doing today … I asked my father about how we came to the United States, and I always thought we came here because my grandfather was a colonel in the Secret War.”
Continuing, she noted how her father lied to get the family into America, saying, “I had thought that meant that we had, we were in line to come to the U.S., and my mother told me — my father told me that was not true. Even though my parents both worked for a Christian organization, and my father actually worked at the U.S. Consulate because he was one of the few people who could speak English and he could type really fast and apparently that was a very valued skill then.”
"*" indicates required fields
Adding to that and commenting on how the family made its way to America, she added, “So they had my father move away from the refugee camp from my mom and my sisters and I, and he went to live at the consulate where he processed all of the paperwork for the refugees that came to America. And we had missed our time to come to the U.S. three times and if we didn’t come that last time, we would not have been able to come to the U.S.”
Returing to the fact that her dad died, and thus that her family is here illegally, she said, “And I said ‘Wow, what luck of ours.’ And my mom said, it wasn’t luck, we did not have our names on that list to come to the U.S. because even though your grandfather worked for the CIA … the only people that had names to come to the U.S. were if you were in the direct military in the CIA, or you worked for USAID … we did not do either one of those. My parents’ Christian organization did not count.”
Concluding, she said, “And so what my father did, one of our uncles worked for USAID and because his mother had died, my father was the one processing the paperwork, put my grandmother down as his mother and so I am illegal in this country, my parents are illegal here in this country. And when we were fleeing that situation, never one time did my family say, ‘Let’s look at which state has the greatest welfare and which state has the greatest benefits because that’s the state we’re going to go to.’”
Watch her here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video