One Million Neighbors w/ Dr. Melissa Borja

Episode three of One Million Neighbors begins with a moment of arrival—6:30 a.m. at a quiet Minnesota airport—where Kathleen Vellenga finally meets the Hmong family her church has spent months preparing to sponsor. What follows is a deeply human portrait of first encounters: fear masked by nervous laughter, culture shock in subzero temperatures, and the overwhelming reality of starting over in a place that feels utterly unfamiliar. For refugees who journeyed from Laos through years in Thai refugee camps to small-town America, resettlement was disorienting and often heartbreaking—marked by isolation, confusion, and the painful gap between expectation and reality.But this episode also pulls back to reveal the larger system that made these encounters possible: the uniquely American public-private refugee resettlement partnership. Faith-based organizations and local congregations didn’t just welcome refugees—they became the backbone of the entire process, providing housing, jobs, language support, and emotional care. Through stories of both success and strain, the episode shows how resettlement depended not just on policy, but on relationships—messy, imperfect, and deeply personal. At its best, it was powered by ordinary people choosing to show up for strangers, transforming bureaucracy into something far more meaningful: community.Dr. Melissa Borja is Associate Professor of American Culture and Director of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan. Trained at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, she is a historian of migration, religion, race, and politics and author of Follow the New Way: American Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change (Harvard University Press), which won the Thomas Wilson Memorial Prize, the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History, and the Outstanding Achievement Award in History from the Association for Asian American Studies. Dr. Borja has advised Princeton's Religion and Forced Migration Initiative and Bridging Divides Initiative. An expert on anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 pandemic, she leads the Virulent Hate Project and has contributed research to Stop AAPI Hate. She is a co-founder of Hoosier Asian American Power and has been active in faith-based refugee resettlement efforts in Indianapolis, where she lives with her family. In honor of her research and advocacy about Asian Americans, USA Today honored her as one of its 2022 Women of the Year.This podcast is part of AAPI Stories of Faith & Life, an Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) project funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. www.aparri.orgwww.axismundi.usExecutive Producer: Dr. Bradley OnishiProducer: Andrew GillOriginal Music, Composition, and Mixing: Scott OkamotoProduction Assistance: Kari Onishi

Episode two of One Million Neighbors brings us to the chaotic final days of Saigon in April 1975, as ten-year-old Simon Hoa-Phan watches his world unravel. From the terror of nighttime bombings to the desperate crush of families fleeing toward evacuation helicopters, Simon’s story captures the fear, uncertainty, and life-altering decisions faced by thousands as South Vietnam fell. His family’s escape—narrow, chaotic, and uncertain—becomes a window into a much larger phenomenon: the mass displacement of millions across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, where war, political upheaval, and U.S. intervention forced entire populations to flee under harrowing conditions.At the same time, across the world in St. Paul, Minnesota, Kathleen Vellenga witnesses these events from a hospital bed and feels a call to act. Her personal turning point reflects a broader movement among American faith communities, who would go on to play a central role in resettling more than a million Southeast Asian refugees. This episode traces the historical roots of that movement—from Cold War politics and moral responsibility to deeply held religious convictions—and introduces the ordinary people who made extraordinary choices to welcome strangers as neighbors.Dr. Melissa Borja is Associate Professor of American Culture and Director of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan. Trained at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, she is a historian of migration, religion, race, and politics and author of Follow the New Way: American Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change (Harvard University Press), which won the Thomas Wilson Memorial Prize, the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History, and the Outstanding Achievement Award in History from the Association for Asian American Studies. Dr. Borja has advised Princeton's Religion and Forced Migration Initiative and Bridging Divides Initiative. An expert on anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 pandemic, she leads the Virulent Hate Project and has contributed research to Stop AAPI Hate. She is a co-founder of Hoosier Asian American Power and has been active in faith-based refugee resettlement efforts in Indianapolis, where she lives with her family. In honor of her research and advocacy about Asian Americans, USA Today honored her as one of its 2022 Women of the Year.This podcast is part of AAPI Stories of Faith & Life, an Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) project funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. www.aparri.orgwww.axismundi.usExecutive Producer: Dr. Bradley OnishiProducer: Andrew GillOriginal Music, Composition, and Mixing: Scott OkamotoProduction Assistance: Kari Onishi

This is One Million Neighbors, a new limited series that tells a largely forgotten story: how, in the 1970s, faith communities across the United States—especially in places like Minneapolis–St. Paul—mobilized to resettle more than one million Southeast Asian refugees in the face of widespread hostility. This episode traces the stark contrast between that history and our current moment, where immigrants are once again cast as threats. It’s a story of contradiction, courage, and possibility—one that challenges us to reconsider what faith has been, what it is now, and what it could be again.By now, many Americans are used to hearing a certain kind of Christian rhetoric about immigration—one that frames mass deportations, strict border enforcement, and exclusion as matters of righteousness, justice, and divine order. In this episode, we begin with those voices, the ones insisting that faith demands removal, suspicion, and allegiance to state power. But we also ask a deeper question: how did we get here? How did a tradition rooted in loving the stranger become, for many, a justification for expelling them? And what happens when that theology collides with real lives—like that of Chung Lee Scott Tao, a U.S. citizen violently detained in his own home during an ICE raid in the Twin Cities?Dr. Melissa Borja is Associate Professor of American Culture and Director of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at the University of Michigan. Trained at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Columbia, she is a historian of migration, religion, race, and politics and author of Follow the New Way: American Refugee Resettlement Policy and Hmong Religious Change (Harvard University Press), which won the Thomas Wilson Memorial Prize, the Frank S. and Elizabeth D. Brewer Prize from the American Society of Church History, and the Outstanding Achievement Award in History from the Association for Asian American Studies. Dr. Borja has advised Princeton's Religion and Forced Migration Initiative and Bridging Divides Initiative. An expert on anti-Asian racism during the Covid-19 pandemic, she leads the Virulent Hate Project and has contributed research to Stop AAPI Hate. She is a co-founder of Hoosier Asian American Power and has been active in faith-based refugee resettlement efforts in Indianapolis, where she lives with her family. In honor of her research and advocacy about Asian Americans, USA Today honored her as one of its 2022 Women of the Year.This podcast is part of AAPI Stories of Faith & Life, an Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI) project funded by Lilly Endowment Incorporated. www.aparri.orgwww.axismundi.usExecutive Producer: Dr. Bradley OnishiProducer: Andrew GillOriginal Music, Composition, and Mixing: Scott OkamotoProduction Assistance: Kari Onishi

One Million Neighbors Trailer