She arrived as a refugee — and now she works at the White House

Elizabeth Phu, an aide to President Obama who works on southeast Asia policy, including refugee outreach, fled Vietnam herself as a young child with her family. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

By Christi Parsons and Michael A. Memoli - 11/20/2015

The pirates had a price: 10 wedding bands, in exchange for pulling the broken-down boat of Vietnamese refugees to the Malaysian shore.

A young father named Frank Phu saw no other way to save his wife and toddler daughter, so he collected the rings into a tiny sack, clamped it between his teeth and swam to the pirates' ship to make the deal. Tugged by the pirates, the passengers made it near the Malaysian island of Pulau Penang, and eventually to a nearby refugee camp run by the government.

Over 36 years after arriving as a “boat person,” as the refugees were crudely called, the young girl, Elizabeth Phu, has come back to this southeast Asian nation -- this time as an American citizen and advisor to President Obama, part of the White House team accompanying him on his 10-day, three-country tour of world-leader summits.

Obama will visit a refugee school Saturday to highlight the plight of migrants in Asia as he makes a case that the world should open its arms to refugees fleeing troubled and war-torn homes, from Syria to Myanmar to Bangladesh. And though the stop has been planned for months, it now unfolds amid an unforeseen debate back home about whether it is time to close the U.S. to refugees instead.

This isn't how I see our country. We're a country that welcomes people in their time of need, people who just want to work hard and make a better life for their families.

“It’s so hard for me to hear,” says Phu, 39, who grew up in Oakland and has pursued a long career as a civilian advisor at the Pentagon and the White House. “This isn’t how I see our country. We’re a country that welcomes people in their time of need, people who just want to work hard and make a better life for their families.”

Back home in California, her mother has retired after a career as a nurse and raising two daughters. Her father still works at the same financial firm that employed him shortly after his arrival.

In Kuala Lumpur, Phu is still working to fulfill the dreams they had for her when they left Saigon. On Friday, she sat with White House staff in the audience as the president recalled his own roots in Southeast Asia – he even spoke a little Indonesian -- and explained just how important it was for him to deepen America's engagement in the region, a task Phu is playing an important role in.

“It's home to so much of humanity, home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies. And that's a key focus of my foreign policy,” he said.

Phu was just a toddler in 1978 when her family first tried to flee the country out of fear of the communist government. Her father worked for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

They were caught and sent to a brutal “re-education camp,” though Phu was barely old enough to walk. Re-education camps were harsh places of hunger and overwork where intellectuals, religious leaders and employees of the old government were sent to “learn” the new government's communist ways. Detainees were supposed to stay for a few weeks; Phu and her family were kept there for months.

Her grandparents managed to buy their freedom, and then sold everything they had to buy passage for Phu, by then close to 4, and her parents on a two-engine boat the size of a couple of hotel rooms. The pilot jammed 253 people into it before setting out, launching a journey that relatives have recounted to Phu many times over the years.

Soon, one of the boat’s engines died and the passengers floated aimlessly for three days, before the pirate boat pulled alongside and offered to pull the boat into Malaysian waters -- but only in exchange for the wedding bands.

Phu’s father collected the jewelry and swam to make the deal.

A heavy fog descended as they tried to pull into the island, only to run into a second set of pirates who ransacked the boat and smashed the water tanks. A woman on the Vietnamese boat died of a heart attack during the assault.

Adrift again for four days, the passengers finally attracted the attention of Malaysian authorities who pulled them to shore and took them to a refugee camp on nearby Pulau Bidong.

Phu’s first memories are of that camp. She recalls the town center where she played, and getting to tell nursery rhymes over the loudspeaker.

There was little food, and her parents sold their belongings to feed her. Her uncles hiked miles to get firewood.

“They let us stay there,” she said. “For that, I’m grateful.”

On Saturday, Phu will visit a new generation of children given refuge by the Malaysian government, alongside the president of the country to which she belongs.

“It’s deeply meaningful and personal,” said Phu. “We need partners like Malaysia who are there to help people desperate to make a better life ... and I’m proud of how much the United States does for refugees.”

In her years at the White House, Phu has helped Obama to shape policy on southeast Asia, a region crucial to the president’s view of the world in terms of trade and strategic alliances.

But while the president has been overseas trying to shore up U.S. partnerships in Asia to counter the rise of China and meeting with close U.S. allies in Turkey to strategize the fight against Islamic State, House lawmakers passed a bill that would block Syrian refugees from the U.S.

The legislation was a culmination of the fierce debate in the wake of last week’s Paris attacks over whether to allow refugees into the country, and the rhetoric has been distressing to the Obama team as it plans Saturday’s message, about welcoming strangers, not shunning them.

“Part of who we are as Americans is our openness to immigrants and to refugees who are fleeing from conflict or oppression,” said Benjamin Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor. “We can’t close our doors to those in need, and we need to support countries who are hosting refugees, like Malaysia, Jordan and Turkey.”

It’s not just a message of charity, said Rhodes, but one of self-interest.

“Refugees from Southeast Asia have become successful in the U.S. and contributed a great deal,” he said. “It has been to our benefit.”

Phu’s story is the kind the administration points to for evidence. She graduated from Miramonte High School outside Oakland and attended college at UC Berkeley and graduate school at UC San Diego.

For the last three years, she has been detailed to the National Security Council staff at the White House, serving now as director for Southeast Asia and Oceania affairs.

The story of her family’s escape from Vietnam she tells easily. Describing her current stature causes her voice to crack.

“A refugee from a communist country can come here and grow up in the U.S. and have the privilege of working in the White House,” she said. “It makes me so proud to be an American.”

Memoli reported from Kuala Lumpur and Parsons from Washington.

A Refugee in the White House: What My Story Reveals About America

President Barack Obama visits a Dignity for Children Foundation classroom in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

By Elizabeth Phu, White House Director for Southeast Asia, Oceania, and East Asian Security Affairs

A re-education camp. That’s what they called it — a euphemism for jail.

I was born in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. During the war, my mother was a nurse, my father worked for the U.S. Army, and my uncle was an officer in the South Vietnamese Army. As far as the state was concerned, we were on the wrong side of history. My parents, and others like them, lived in constant fear and uncertain of the kind of future their daughter would have under such circumstances.

So when I was two, my parents planned our escape. We tried to flee, but they found us. My mother and I were sent to a re-education camp for 7 months. My father and uncles were locked up for an entire year before my grandparents were able to buy their freedom.

President Barack Obama is hugged by a participant during a discussion with refugees at the Dignity for Children Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

It was clear we couldn’t stay. So, once out, my family made another attempt to leave Vietnam. My parents and grandparents gathered what they could to pay for our passage on an over-crowded boat headed out to sea.

It was a dangerous journey. Twice, we encountered pirates. The second band of pirates attacked and ransacked our boat, took all that we had, and smashed our remaining water tanks. But, we eventually made it to Pulau Bidong, an island in Malaysia.

President Barack Obama hugs one of the participants following a discussion with refugees at the Dignity for Children Foundation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

I was one month shy of my fourth birthday when we finally made it to America on December 3, 1979. My parents had $20 in their pockets and a few friends in Oakland, CA who helped us start our new lives in America. It took one month of food stamps and daily searching, but they found jobs and slowly managed to build a modest life for our family. Our neighbors opened their homes and their hearts to us, teaching us about American traditions and cultures.

President Barack Obama visits a Dignity for Children Foundation classroom in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

I learned English, and I still remember my first English sentence: “Teacher, can you please push me on the swing?” I practiced it over and over so I could say it in school the next day.

Because of my parents, and because of the home and opportunity this country offered us, my American-born sister and I went on to graduate from college and today, I work in the White House for President Obama on his national security team.

Only in America is a story like this possible. I do not want to imagine what kind of life I would have led if the American people hadn’t taken us in.

Right now, there are millions of refugees who are hoping their story can go the same way. The world is facing a refugee crisis right now — the worst it’s ever seen since World War II. Sixty million parents and children have been displaced and are now looking for safe haven — just like I was as a little girl. Today, I joined President Obama at a Foundation in Kuala Lumpur dedicated to helping refugees and some of the city’s poor, providing them education, training, and hope. Thousands of refugees have been helped by The Dignity for Children Foundation and many other organizations providing aid over the years — refugees who would be facing a very different fate had Malaysia not welcomed them.

President Barack Obama visits a Dignity for Children Foundation classroom in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

My dad always reminds us that the freedom we have isn’t freely won. We risked everything to flee and run toward these shores, and we must earn it here by making the most of the opportunity America gives us. That’s what so many fleeing the violence and terrorism in Syria and other places around the world are seeking — an opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their families.

President Barack Obama visits a Dignity for Children Foundation classroom in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Nov. 21, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

There are many things that make America great. But to me, above all else, it is our boundless compassion and generosity — to defend freedom and protect those seeking it — that sets us apart. It’s who we are. I hope that never changes.

Some initially heralded his victory as the arrival of a “post-racial” America.

Members of the crowd in Gary, Ind., seek to shake the candidate's hand or touch his head as he thanks them for their support in October 2008. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

By Peniel Joseph April 22, 2016

The Washington Post

Barack Obama’s watershed 2008 election and the presidency that followed profoundly altered the aesthetics of American democracy, transforming the Founding Fathers’ narrow vision of politics and citizenship into something more expansive and more elegant. The American presidency suddenly looked very different, and for a moment America felt different, too.

The Obama victory helped fulfill one of the great ambitions of the civil rights struggle by showcasing the ability of extraordinarily talented black Americans to lead and excel in all facets of American life. First lady Michelle Obama, and daughters Sasha and Malia, extended this reimagining of black American life by providing a conspicuous vision of a healthy, loving and thriving African American family that defies still-prevalent racist stereotypes.

But some interpreted Obama’s triumph as much more.

The victory was heralded as the arrival of a “post-racial” America, one in which the nation’s original sin of racial slavery and post-Reconstruction Jim Crow discrimination had finally been absolved by the election of a black man as commander in chief. For a while, the nation basked in a racially harmonious afterglow.

A black president would influence generations of young children to embrace a new vision of American citizenship. The “Obama Coalition” of African American, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters had helped usher in an era in which institutional racism and pervasive inequality would fade as Americans embraced the nation’s multicultural promise.

Seven years later, such profound optimism seems misplaced. Almost immediately, the Obama presidency unleashed racial furies that have only multiplied over time. From the tea party’s racially tinged attacks on the president’s policy agenda to the “birther” movement’s more overtly racist fantasies asserting that Obama was not even an American citizen, the national racial climate grew more, and not less, fraught.

President Obama is feted in Chicago on Nov. 6, 2012, the night he is elected to his second term as commander in chief. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

If racial conflict, in the form of birthers, tea partyers and gnawing resentments, implicitly shadowed Obama’s first term, it erupted into open warfare during much of his second. The Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in the Shelby v. Holder case gutted Voting Rights Act enforcement, throwing into question the signal achievement of the civil rights movement’s heroic period.

Beginning with the 2012 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida, the nation reopened an intense debate on the continued horror of institutional racism evidenced by a string of high-profile deaths of black men, women, boys and girls at the hands of law enforcement.

The organized demonstrations, protests and outrage of a new generation of civil rights activists turned the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter into the clarion call for a new social justice movement. Black Lives Matter activists have forcefully argued that the U.S. criminal justice system represents a gateway to racial oppression, one marked by a drug war that disproportionately targets, punishes and warehouses young men and women of color. In her bestselling book “The New Jim Crow,” legal scholar Michelle Alexander argued that mass incarceration represents a racial caste system that echoes the pervasive, structural inequality of a system of racial apartheid that persists.

A supporter hugs President Obama as he works the rope line following a rally in Denver in October 2012. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Obama’s first-term caution on race matters was punctured by his controversial remarks that police “acted stupidly” in the mistaken identity arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University’s prominent African American studies professor, in 2009. Four years later he entered the breach once more by proclaiming that if he had a son, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

In the aftermath of racial unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, and a racially motivated massacre in Charleston, S.C., Obama went further. In 2015, Obama found his voice in a series of stirring speeches in Selma, Ala., and Charleston, where he acknowledged America’s long and continuous history of racial injustice.

Policy-wise Obama has launched a private philanthropic effort, My Brother’s Keeper, designed to assist low-income black boys, and became the first president to visit a federal prison in a call for prison reform that foreshadowed the administration’s efforts to release federal inmates facing long sentences on relatively minor drug charges.

Despite these efforts, many of Obama’s African American supporters have expressed profound disappointment over the president’s refusal to forcefully pursue racial and economic justice policies for his most loyal political constituency.

From this perspective, the Obama presidency has played out as a cruel joke on members of the African American community who, despite providing indispensable votes, critical support and unstinting loyalty, find themselves largely shut out from the nation’s post-Great Recession economic recovery. Blacks have, critics suggested, traded away substantive policy demands for the largely symbolic psychological and emotional victory of having a black president and first family in the White House for eight years.

Others find that assessment harsh, noting that Obama’s most impressive policy achievements have received scant promotion from the White House or acknowledgment in the mainstream media.

History will decide the full measure of the importance, success, failures and shortcomings of the Obama presidency. With regard to race, Obama’s historical significance is ensured; only his impact and legacy are up for debate. In retrospect, the burden of transforming America’s tortured racial history in two four-year presidential terms proved impossible, even as its promise helped to catapult Obama to the nation’s highest office.

President Obama wraps up his campaign with a final stop in downtown Des Moines on Nov. 5, 2012. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

Obama’s presidency elides important aspects of the civil rights struggle, especially the teachings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. King, for a time, served as the racial justice consciousness for two presidents — John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Many who hoped Obama might be able to serve both roles — as president and racial justice advocate — have been disappointed. Yet there is a revelatory clarity in that disappointment, proving that Obama is not King or Frederick Douglass, but Abraham Lincoln, Kennedy and Johnson. Even a black president, perhaps especially a black president, could not untangle racism’s Gordian knot on the body politic. Yet in acknowledging the limitations of Obama’s presidency on healing racial divisions and the shortcomings of his policies in uplifting black America, we may reach a newfound political maturity that recognizes that no one person — no matter how powerful — can single-handedly rectify structures of inequality constructed over centuries.

Peniel Joseph is professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas.