Briefing Book

White House Conference

HMONG NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, INC. 1326 18th Street, NW, Suite 200A Washington, DC 20036 Tel: (202) 463-2118 Fax: (202) 463-2119 E-mail: HND97DC@nmaa.org Statement of Hmong National Development, Inc. on Social Security Reform by Lee Pao Xiong, President We congratulate the effort of this Administration on its effort of reaching out to under-represented groups, such as the Hmong community, by allowing us to share our views on the Social Security Reform. We further applaud this Administration for given us the opportunity to work with the technical language when Congress and the President restored SSI to the legal immigrants. We were very concerned when we heard that new immigrants and refugees, who were taxpayers of this country, would be denied Social Security benefits because they were not United States citizens. Since many of the Hmong came here as immigrants and refugees, many of our elders do not have the language mean to pass the citizenship test, we were extremely worried. We came from a country where most of our people were trained either as warriors by the CIA or farmers by trade. This policy of exclusion was a grave concern for our people. However, we were relieved to know that President Bill Clinton was committed to restoring all benefits to legal immigrants and refugees, which he eventually did. We hope that you would maintain this policy of acceptance and compassion for our people. Since the Hmong people are new to this country, we have yet to learn about the many benefits and services available to us as taxpayers through the various federal agencies, including the Social Security Services Administration. We do know for sure that our social security and other federal taxes are being taken out of our paychecks every month. As a national organization, the Hmong National Development would like to continue working with this Administration to make sure that the Hmong community can fully utilize the benefits and services that are available to them as taxpayers. We wish for a success at this conference. If there's anything that we can assist in this effort of reaching out to under-represented groups, please feel free to call on us. Thank you.