Museum of Chinese in America

Fernando Chang-Muy has had a long career in immigrant and refugee legal advocacy, including as staff attorney and Director of the Southeast Asian Refugee Project at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, and as Legal Officer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He currently teaches Refugee Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and Social Work and Immigration in its Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice. At the time of the Golden Venture, he was involved in training attorneys in York County to represent Chinese immigrants who had been transferred to the local immigrant detention center. In his brief historical overview of the then existing legal infrastructure, Chang-Muy explains that asylum law was relatively new and legal practitioners were few, thus highlighting the importance of the Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center’s (PIRC) development of legal training. His historical overview also covers the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, a history of America as country of immigration and refuge for Quakers, Chinese, Central Americans, Syrians and other groups, the raising and lowering of refugee resettlement quotas under various presidents, and attempts to stop the entry of Muslim refugees in the era after 9/11. He gives in-depth legal expertise on the applicability of due process to the Golden Venture Chinese, reasons for prolonged detention, and issues of concern in the immigration detention and asylum process and system. Chang-Muy then pivots to discuss desired visitor takeaways from the MOCA FOLD Exhibition. The oral history ends with a brief discussion of his personal and family history, including the immigration of his father from Cuba as a refugee, and its influence on his decision to pursue a career in immigration law.