In a Statehouse interview, ALCAP President and Priority Talk Radio Host Greg Davis set down with Derek Chen. Chen is running for Alabama State Auditor, and he joined Greg Davis to tell his story.
“I’m not your traditional candidate, in the sense that I don’t have a traditional pathway of getting here to running for office. I was born and raised in Southern California, I hope your listeners don’t hold that against me too much. But I did get out of California, I escaped California to the free state of Alabama as quickly as I possibly could.”
He explained that his great-grandparents fought in Chiang Kai-shek’s army during the Chinese Civil War against the communists. The communists began taking a lot of territory in China, and this forced Chiang Kai-shek to retreat to Taiwan. To this day, China and Taiwan are engaged in a geopolitical struggle. Derek Chen’s grandparents grew up in Taiwan, and his parents were born in Taiwan. When President Jimmy Carter’s Administration switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan’s government to China’s, everyone in Taiwan thought that China was about to invade the island. Those who could leave, left.
In the early-to-mid 1980s, Chen’s grandparents left for the United States when his parents were still children in age. At this point, Taiwan had been under threat for years. Why did they wait years to leave for America?
“I always wondered why it took [my grandparents] so long to immigrate to the US if everybody thought that the communists were about to invade imminently. One day I asked my granddad. I said, ‘Granddad, why did you guys take so long to immigrate to the US if everybody thought that the communists were about to invade Taiwan imminently?’ I never forgot what he told me, Greg. My granddad said, ‘We were scared. We were worried. But we had to wait several years because we had to wait for our visas. We had to go through a long vetting process. But if were to break the laws of our new country in order to get here, what kind of example would I be setting for my children? We had to do it the right way,'” Derek Chen said.
This profoundly impacted him, and has led him to seek to become a public servant.
“Freedom and liberty [in the US] is always worth protecting,” Chen added.
To listen to the rest of the inspiring conversation, click here.