Former Gov. Robert Ray has many legacies. One of the greatest among them, the humanitarian gesture in the late 1970s that brought thousands of Southeast Asian refugees to Iowa, will be recognized with an $800,000 Asian garden and $10 million Chinese Cultural Center that will complement the planned Principal Riverwalk on the east side of the Des Moines River.

Through Ray’s leadership, thousands of lives were saved. Among former refugees and their descendants, he’s called “Dad,” an appelation that shows the high esteem in which he is held. The faith community responded to the governor’s initiative, sponsoring families and ensuring their assimilation into the state’s culture. Iowans and their renowned hospitality have rarely shined more brightly.

The warmth with which the refugees were welcomed to Iowa contrasts sharply with the treatment of the most recent refugees to Iowa, for example, the Latinos who risk death for a better life in the United States. The Southeast Asians faced language and cultural barriers in the 1970s and 1980s, but no one contemplated an English-only statute, the law that divides and separates us and whose promoters included groups with direct ties to racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

When the Asian refugees came to Iowa, no one seriously suggested closing the state’s borders to immigrants. If there was a hatred for the new residents of Iowa, it was so greatly overshadowed by humanitarianism that it barely registered.

Some of the difference may lie in the fact that when the Asian refugees came to Iowa in the 1970s and 1980s, they were brought here as part of a humanitarian resettlement effort, while in the 1990s, Iowa looked to immigrants to increase the state’s population and fill the anticipated worker shortages that could spell disaster for Iowa employers in the next two decades. And since 9/11, Americans are increasingly suspicious and wary of immigrants, especially those from the Middle East. White nationalism and xenophobia are gaining an even stronger foothold, providing a new challenge for human rights activists.

Immigration has been “marketed” incorrectly in Iowa. Humanitarianism should be at the core of our immigration efforts, not a plea for workers to fill low-paying, difficult and unpleasant jobs. New immigrants often are seeking economic justice or escape from the civil wars that rip their countries apart. If the leaders of Iowa today took the same humanitarian approach that Ray did in the late 1970s, would Latinos’ assimilation into our culture be less painful?

When they are completed, the Asian garden and Chinese Cultural Center projects will represent hope: the hope of the refugees who fled their war-torn countries and hope for a more inclusive Iowa in the future. They will show what we can be and what we have been, but what are not now.

Beth Dalbey is editorial director for Business Publications Corp. E-mail her at bethdalbey@bpcdm.com.