text:  1980 was a key moment for one reason above all, and that was the government passed the 1980 Refugee Act. In the past, the U.S. government tried to provide protection to people fleeing persecution and upheaval and wars and all sorts of things across the world, but there had never been a systematic policy. And so for the first time, you had a concerted effort to give some sort of order to this broader ethos.