On September 12, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong—the first Asian-American to hold statewide office in Connecticut—retraced his journey from being the son of a refugee to a career in politics and law, as he delivered the 28th annual Attorney General Robert Abrams Public Service Lecture.
A former state assemblyman who has served as attorney general since 2019, Tong was at the forefront of a landmark $6 billion settlement that OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma reached with families and states over the opioid crisis. (Last year, the US Supreme Court rejected the plan; Purdue Pharma has said it will seek to negotiate a new settlement.) Now Tong is part of a multi-state lawsuit against Meta that accuses the social media company of developing features that deliberately hook children on its platforms.
In his address, however, Tong, who is Chinese American, focused on the guiding influence of his family’s immigrant background. He remembered working alongside his parents in the restaurant they owned. From the cramped, hot kitchen, Tong recalled, he would glance over at the clientele.
“I would see people enjoying Friday night dinner with their families. I was keenly aware that those people didn’t look like me. And it was my job to work with my parents to serve them,” he said. “I’m grateful for those people. They paid for my education and gave me every opportunity in this country. But I was always aware that a door and a window was a figurative and literal separation between me and them. And so I just wanted to get out of that kitchen [and go] into the dining room to literally be a part of that community and get a seat at the table.”
Even more influential for him, Tong said, were his father’s immigration travails, which took place before he was born. Following the 1949 Chinese Revolution, his father had fled mainland China for Hong Kong, then Canada, before arriving in the United States on a tourist visa. In 1972, Tong recounted, an immigration enforcement official visited his father at the restaurant. “‘You know, Mr. Tong, we love your restaurant. We eat here,” Tong said his father was told. “‘But you’re on an expired visa. You gotta go.’”
Tong's parents considered fleeing to Canada. But not before his father made a desperate appeal. “So he goes home to [my parents’] apartment, gets out a pen, [a] piece of paper, [and] he writes a six-page handwritten letter to the President of the United States. He begged for the opportunity to stay in this country,” Tong said. Eventually, his father received a response that would allow him to remain in the US and, in time, pursue citizenship.
“It was because of Richard Nixon’s extraordinary act of grace and compassion that I was born the first American in my family,” Tong said as a round of applause broke out. But as the clapping quieted, Tong added: “If this were to happen today, you know that people would call my father illegal, right? At best, undocumented. And I would probably be called an anchor baby. And I am. But I am very proud and very lucky that I was born, and grew up, in a country that valued immigrants and honored our contributions.”
In taking questions from the audience, Tong was asked whether opportunities still exist for him to collaborate with his Republican counterparts in a climate of highly partisan divisions. While noting his own concerns over potential violence and legal challenges in the aftermath of this year’s presidential election, Tong returned to his speech’s dual themes of optimism and historical perspective.
“Generations before have always thought that their existential crisis is the end of history. But it’s not the end of history. The world changes every seven seconds. We get whiplash from how much is going on,” he said. “But everybody, settle down. It’s not 1968, right? It’s not 1860, okay? It’s not 1939 through ’45 in Germany or in Poland. We’ve been in very dark places as a people in human history, and we’ve come out of it. We’re resilient. But people had to do extraordinary things to pull us out of it.”
Posted October 3, 2024