A country that took them in
Every one of the people on this site lost a home. Some fled the Nazis. Some escaped the Iron Curtain or Castro's Cuba. Others left Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia after 1975, or Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan in the decades that followed. They came through camps, airlifts, fishing boats, and long walks across borders.
Then they took the oath of the country that had given them refuge and went back out into the world to represent it. Two became Secretary of State. Others became ambassadors, Foreign Service officers, interpreters, consular officers, refugee specialists, and Diplomatic Security special agents. Many served in the very regions their families had fled.
57 people from 18 countries who fled war and persecution and went on to serve the United States in diplomacy. Every profile is based on what the person has said publicly or on published records, and each page lists its sources.
Stories
Madeleine Korbel AlbrightTwice a refugee as a child, she became the first woman to serve as Secretary of State.Sichan SivSurvived Khmer Rouge labor camps, escaped on foot to Thailand, and rose to ambassador at the United Nations.Mustafa M. PopalFled Kabul after the Soviet invasion and returned to the same airport to help run the 2021 evacuation.Songkane SackalyCame from Laos as a refugee, served in the U.S. Army in Iraq, and joined the Foreign Service.Herro Mustafa GargA Kurdish girl from Erbil who spent two years in a refugee camp and became ambassador to Bulgaria and Egypt.Gai NyokOne of Sudan's 'Lost Boys,' he walked to Ethiopia as a child and became a U.S. diplomat.Ints M. SiliņšEscaped Soviet-occupied Latvia as a toddler, grew up a displaced person, and became the first U.S. ambassador to free Latvia.Lino GutiérrezFled Cuba after the Bay of Pigs, waited fourteen months in Colombia, and became ambassador to Nicaragua and Argentina.Martina Anna Tkadlec StrongEscaped Czechoslovakia on a family 'vacation,' waited in a camp near Belgrade, and became ambassador to the UAE.
Explore
- The Diplomats: every profile, grouped by region.
- By Country: the history of each refugee exodus and the diplomats who came out of it.
- Refugees and the State Department: how American diplomacy shaped refugee rescue, and how refugees shaped American diplomacy.
- The Path to the Foreign Service: how a former refugee becomes a U.S. diplomat today.
- Second Generation: children of refugees who joined the Foreign Service.
- Library: camps, airlifts, refugee laws, diplomats who rescued refugees, and Laos in depth.
- Timeline: from 1938 to today.