"[1] The initial Act gave these alien veterans eighteen months since the day of the bill's passage by the U.S. Congress, and its signature by the President of the United States, to file a naturalization application for honorary U.S. citizenship.
Colonel Wangyee Vang, President of the Lao Veterans of America Institute, Philip Smith, Executive Director of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, the Lao Veterans of America, Inc. and others, helped educate and mobilized the Lao- and Hmong-American community across the United States to support passage of the legislation.
Decades before the Hmong Veterans' Naturalization Act came into existence, a U.S.-backed clandestine and covert military operation took place in Laos for some 14 years during the Vietnam War.
According to Representative Bruce Vento, conservative estimates "list 18,000 to 20,000 [Laotians] killed in combat between 1963 and 1971 with tens of thousands injured."
[19] The second purpose was to educate the U.S. Congress and U.S. government about the unique obstacle the Hmong people had in taking the English test in order to get naturalized.
[18][20] This bill was first introduced in the early 1990s by a handful of members of Congress led by Representative Bruce Vento (D-MN), and key Republicans, including Don Ritter (R-PA), in an effort to honor Hmong and Laotian veterans who were enlisted in the U.S.-backed "Secret Army" in the Kingdom of Laos during the Vietnam War.
The bill was a result of not only a large lobby effort by the Lao Veterans of America (LVA), and its National President, Colonel Wangyee Vang, and Washington, D.C., Director, Philip Smith, but also support and pressure from the Hmong community, and Vang Pao as well—-who Smith and the LVA worked closely with from 1988-2003 on various public policy issues.
[18] Philip Smith, a veteran public policy analyst and influential legislative affairs expert on Capitol Hill, along with Colonel Wangyee Vang, of the Fresno, California-based Lao Veterans of America Institute and LVA, are widely credited as having developed the bipartisan strategy, and efforts in the U.S. Congress and Lao- and Hmong-American community that ultimately led both to the introduction and final passage of the legislation, as well as the two follow-on bills to grant and extension of time to implement the original bill and grant citizenship to the Hmong veterans' widows.
[29] Historic and massive events, held for the first time ever at the national level, at the Laos Memorial, in Arlington National Cemetery, the U.S. Congress, and Vietnam Memorial, to honor Laotian and Hmong veterans of the U.S. "Secret Army" were organized and funded in Washington, D.C., on May 14–15, 1997, by Wangyee Vang and Philip Smith of the Lao Veterans of America Institute, LVA and Centre for Public Policy Analysis.
This does not arrange for any veterans' benefits or monetary reparations The law only applies those who: Applicants must be ethnic Hmong or Laotian to be considered.
This includes an affidavit for a U.S.-backed Lao Hmong commanding officer or existing legal document from the U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service.