HOUSE RESOLUTION COMMEMORATES 1958 AZOREAN REFUGEE ACT
By Michael Doyle

McClatchy Washington Bureau
August 12, 2008
DC

WASHINGTON — John F. Kennedy helped populate the San Joaquin Valley
with Azoreans. Now, the Valley’s lawmakers offer a belated thanks.

In a commemoration that’s also a rich political lesson, six House
members are honoring long-ago congressional efforts on behalf of
Azoreans displaced by a 1950s volcano. The volcano subsided, but the
consequences of Kennedy’s efforts can still be felt today.

"We understand the 50th anniversary is an important milestone,"
Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said Tuesday.

Costa recently introduced a resolution commemorating the
half-century-old Azorean Refugee Act. The legislation and its
successors welcomed thousands of refugees fleeing the Capelhinos
volcano, which boiled the island of Faial between September 1957 and
October 1958.

"Everywhere within a four-mile radius the lava and ash spread fear and
destruction," Kennedy declared on the Senate floor on June 30, 1958.

The new commemorative resolution, in turn, is the kind of symbolic
shout-out that proliferates in a Congress highly attuned to ethnic
voting blocs.

Costa and his Valley co-authors, Reps. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, and
Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, all represent sizable Portuguese-American
constituencies. Costa himself had one grandfather who emigrated from
Portugal in 1899, and another who came in 1904.

The three other Democratic co-sponsors come from Rhode Island
and Massachusetts, which are likewise well-populated by
Portuguese-Americans.

In a similar expression of all-politics-is-local, Fresno-area
lawmakers whose districts include tens of thousands of
Armenian-American constituents have long championed an Armenian
genocide resolution. The Valley’s politically vocal Hmong refugees
convinced Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, to denounce the socialist
Laotian government. The Valley’s significant Sikh population persuaded
former Rep. Gary Condit of Ceres to opine on internal Indian politics.

The 2000 census identified 1.1 million Portuguese-Americans living in
the United States, including about 330,000 in California. Many are
concentrated in certain regions, a trend that typically amplifies
business and political clout. The new resolution, for instance,
asserts that roughly half of the San Joaquin Valley’s dairy farms by
the 1970s were owned by Portuguese-Americans.

"There are still a lot of living immigrants who came as a result of
that (1958) legislation," noted Nunes’ chief of staff, Johnny Amaral,
whose own grandparents and father immigrated from Faial.

Costa and his colleagues introduced the Azorean Refugee Act
commemoration July 31. Costa and Nunes shortly thereafter departed
for the Azores, a cluster of islands 900 miles west of Portugal,
where they visited relatives and helped island residents commemorate
the volcanic eruption.

"The eruption of the Capelhinos volcano led to a wave of Portuguese
immigration that brought more than 175,000 Azoreans to the United
States between 1960 and 1980," the resolution states.

The resolution glosses over some politically instructive details.

The initial moving force behind the Azorean Refugee Act was Sen. John
O. Pastore, a Rhode Island Democrat who introduced the measure June 4,
1958. The legislation authorized 1,500 visas for Azoreans affected
by the volcano.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts senator still two years away from his 1960
presidential bid, came on board three weeks later. So did others
attentive to Portuguese-American voters.

"In the district which I represent in California are a great many
families of Portuguese extraction," then-Rep. John McFall, a Democrat
from Manteca, declared Aug. 22, 1958 House. "These people have earned
the reputation as fine, hardworking, law-abiding citizens."

The 1958 political maneuvering took some familiar-sounding turns.

Other senators including New York Democrat Jacob Javits said they
wanted "comprehensive" immigration legislation. Senate leaders,
though, warned the Azorean refugee bill would die if anyone hijacked
it as a vehicle for broader immigration reform.

"I know it is not an idle threat," a frustrated Javits declared, adding
that "it should be made clear that far more inclusive immigration
action in the interest of the United States is urgently required."

But in the kind of side deal that often lubricates legislation,
lawmakers did add several thousand additional visas for Dutch
nationals. The initially limited Azorean visa program then expanded
in future years, until quotas were lifted altogether.