There are times Jay Teng wonders what his life would be if his family had been forced to go back to China in the early 1950s.
“My brother and I would have been 17 when the cultural revolution occurred, and we would have been sent to the countryside, at best,” Teng said.
Growing up, Jay and his twin brother, Ray Teng, heard stories about how their parents in May 1951 were ordered by the U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service to leave the country. As the story goes, an up-and-coming senator from Texas named Lyndon B. Johnson wrote a letter to INS and helped secure their parents’ stay in the country.
In June, which marked the 73rd anniversary of Teng’s family learning that they would not be deported, Jay and Ray Teng, for the first time, reviewed documents from the National Archives and Records Administration showing that more than 70 people signed a letter to LBJ in support of keeping the Tengs in the country. The letters also provided a clearer picture of why the couple was ordered to leave.
“When you have a history you get little fragments, now the puzzle has more parts that fit in together,” Jay Teng said. “It’s always nice to have the full puzzle rather than just the few segments of the puzzle.”
After reviewing the documents, Ray…
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