(Yaaj) or Ya (Yaj). 1990s and 2000s Following the 1980 immigration wave, a heated global political debate developed over how to deal with the remaining Hmong refugees in Thailand. Many had been held in squalid Thai refugee camps, and the United Nations and the Clinton administration sought to repatriate them to Laos. Reports of human rights violations against the Hmong in Laos, including killings and imprisonments, led most Thailand-based Hmong to oppose returning there, even as the conditions worsened of the camps in Thailand, because of their lack of sufficient funding. One of the more prominent examples of apparent Laotian abuse of the Hmong was the fate of Vue Mai, a former soldier. The US Embassy in Bangkok recruited him to return to Laos under the repatriation program, in their effort to reassure the Thai-based Hmong that their safety in Laos would be assured. But Vue disappeared in Vientiane. The US Commission for Refugees later reported that he was arrested by Lao security forces and never seen again. Especially following the Vue Mai incident, the Clinton and UN policy of returning the Hmong to Laos began to meet with strong political opposition by US conservatives and some human rights advocates. Michael Johns, a former White House aide to President George H. W. Bush and a Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst, along with other influential conservatives, led a campaign to grant the Thai-based Hmong immediate US immigration rights. In an October 1995 National Review article, citing the Hmong's contributions to US war efforts during the Vietnam War, Johns described President Clinton's support for returning the Thai-based Hmong refugees to Laos as a "betrayal" and urged Congressional Republicans to step up opposition to the repatriation. Opposition to the repatriation grew in Congress and among Hmong families in the US. Congressional Republicans responded by introducing and passing legislation to appropriate sufficient funds to resettle all remaining Hmong in Thailand in the United States. Clinton vowed to veto the legislation. In addition to internal US opposition to the repatriation, the government of Laos expressed reservations about the repatriation, stating that the Hmong remaining in Thailand were a threat to its one-party communist government and the Marxist government in Vientiane, Laos. In a significant and unforeseen political victory for the Hmong and their US Republican advocates, tens of thousands of Thai-based Hmong refugees were ultimately granted US immigration rights. The majority were resettled in California,