Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990 TAG: 9007310310
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Douglas Pardue
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Trinh Mai rushed through the front door of her Southeast Roanoke apartment and thrust her report card into her mother's hands.
"I got all A's and B's and a C in driver education," she announced. A smile like an ocean sunrise burst across her 17-year-old face.
The A's and B's made her proud, but the C was cause for pure happiness.
"I passed driver education. I can drive a car!"
That same April day, Dat Huynh, 16, also got his report card.
Shirtless and enjoying the early spring warmth, Dat smiled and laughed about his grades. "All F's," he said.
Actually, he got an F, two D's, a C and a B. But Dat doesn't care about school. He wants to drop out, get a job and make money.
The odds are slim that Trinh will be able to buy the car of her dreams anytime soon. The odds are even slimmer that Dat will get much of a job if he drops out.
With little education or technical skills, Trinh, Dat and their families are struggling to survive in an alien culture.
They arrived in Roanoke a year ago with visions of gold hanging in trees. They found food stamps, welfare, hard labor and isolation.
Trinh and Dat are children of the Vietnam War. Their mothers are Vietnamese, their fathers American GIs who left before the 1975 communist takeover. They were outcasts - derisively known as the "dust of the earth" - in a country where the communist victors saw them as unwanted reminders of the war with the United States.
Now, Trinh and Dat are among thousands of Amerasian children allowed into the United States as refugees. With them they've brought their mothers, sisters, brothers and, in some cases, stepfathers.
They arrived under the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, which was designed to speed arrival of Amerasians. The Homecoming Act is part of the first official effort the United States has made to help the illegitimate children of its soldiers and sailors. It was born of reports that Amerasian children faced official discrimination and even physical abuse in Vietnam.
In the past decade, about 10,000 Amerasians and more than 21,000 family members have come to this country. The U.S. State Department estimates an equal number is waiting to leave Vietnam.
Only a few of those who arrive will find support from their American fathers.
Trinh and Dat are like most Amerasians: They have never seen their American fathers, don't know where they are, and don't really care. Trinh doesn't even know her father's last name.
For Trinh and Dat, finding their fathers is the least of their concerns. The big problem is figuring out how to get by in America.
The first waves of refugees from Vietnam were educated professionals or military and political leaders who had cooperated with the United States. Many already spoke English and understood what life would be like here.
Most Amerasians and their families have little education or technical skills and know almost no English.
Trinh and Dat say the difficulty is worth the opportunity.
In Vietnam, the thought of some day driving a car never entered Trinh's mind. And Dat would have had little chance at further education, much less a chance to drop out.
Caught between 2 worlds
On May 15, 1989, Barbara Smith, regional director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement for the United States Catholic Conference, called a meeting of a dozen Roanoke educators and health and social-service workers.
"We've got 50 Amerasians and their family members coming this summer and we've got to get ready," she told them.
In the past 15 years, Smith's office has helped resettle more than 900 refugees in Roanoke and Southwest Virginia. Most have been Vietnamese.
Smith knew that resettling the Amerasian families would be harder because of their lack of education and technical skills.
Kathy Varney, a Vietnamese immigrant who works with the resettlement office, says Amerasians often have a poor self-image, partly due to years of discrimination.
"They are caught between two worlds," Varney told the educators and social workers. "They never feel very good about themselves, no matter how beautiful they look . . . One minute they're Vietnamese, another they're American, and then they're neither."
To make matters worse, many Amerasians arrive in single-parent families headed by women.
"Imagine what it's like for them to suddenly arrive in Roanoke, Virginia," Smith said.
A surprise on arrival
On May 26, 1989, Trinh, Dat and their families flew into Roanoke - and a new life.
They looked tired and bewildered as they walked into the old airport terminal carrying less luggage than an American teen-ager totes to a slumber party.
Refugee workers and sponsors awkwardly exchanged greetings and introductions with them. Barbara Smith also got a shock. Both Dat's mother and Trinh's were obviously pregnant.
Inadequate information about arriving refugees is one of the problems Smith has to deal with. Dat's mother's pregnancy was not a major one because her husband came with her. He would be able to get a job to support her.
But Trinh's mother, Tho Mai, 37, didn't bring her husband, who was afraid to leave Vietnam. She came with Trinh, her oldest child, and four other daughters, ages 2 to 12. She said she didn't realize she was pregnant with a sixth child until she'd been in a cultural orientation camp in the Philippines for several months.
The main goal of Roanoke's resettlement office is to help refugees become independent as quickly as possible. Smith gets just $525 per refugee in government aid to help with resettlement. Most of that money is used up in the first three months, and Smith knew Tho Mai would need financial help a lot longer than that.
"It's rare for refugees to be on welfare for long," Smith said. "Most of them come over here ready and willing to work, and work hard."
In Roanoke, only a handful of the more than 900 refugees are on welfare, Smith said. Those who still receive aid have been here only about a year.
Nationally, more than half of all refugees get off welfare within two years. In Virginia, the figure is 80 percent.
"The truth of the matter is that refugees do go to work and do get off welfare," said William Eckhof, deputy director of refugee resettlement for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. "It's just a matter of time."
`Jim, just Jim'
The morning of May 27 gave Dat, Trinh and their families their first daylight glimpse of Roanoke.
They awoke in Hope House, a small Tudor-style home on Fourth Street in Old Southwest that the refugee office used last year as a transitional home for new refugees. Most of the day was used to recover from jet lag and prepare for culture shock. The parents rested, and the children stared, wide-eyed and silent, at "Alf" on a black-and-white television set.
"Ro-ah-no, very nice," Dat's adopted father, Hue Huynh, said. Six months of English in the Philippine transition camp was all the language instruction he'd had.
Only Trinh's mother, Tho Mai, knew enough English to understand a few basic questions without an interpreter.
Roanoke reminded her of Vietnam because of the trees and mountains. But, she said, the early morning air was "too cold." She folded her arms across her chest, and shivered to show what she meant.
Tho Mai, barely 5 feet tall, looked even shorter because of her pregnancy. She hadn't spoken English for 16 years, and her dark eyes strained to follow lips as she tried to put meaning to sentences from the few words she recognized.
She learned her English as a waitress at a U.S. enlisted men's club near Saigon. She was 21 when she met the American soldier who would father, but never know, Trinh.
They dated about a year and lived together for a month before he was pulled out before the fall of South Vietnam. They planned to marry, but hadn't finished the paper work when he was ordered out, she said. Neither knew she was pregnant.
South Vietnam collapsed so quickly that she and her American lover lost touch with each other. "I no can send him letter," she said.
When she gave birth to Trinh, she went into hiding for a month, afraid the communists would punish her for having an American's baby.
While she hid, her mother was so afraid that she destroyed all of Mai's documents that included the name of her American lover.
Now, Mai says, she would like to find him, just to talk, and to let Trinh see and perhaps get to know her father. But she can't remember his last name.
"Jim, just Jim," is all she recalls.
"I feel sorry," she says, "if she no tore up papers, I know Jim now."
About four years after the communist takeover, Tho Mai married a man who fathered three of her daughters. She left him because he was alcoholic and abusive; he beat Trinh because she was Amerasian.
Tho Mai survived by working as a street vendor selling locks, nails and hardware.
Life was difficult, especially for Trinh, who was picked on and discriminated against. The government made it difficult for her to go to school and sometimes wouldn't let her attend classes.
"They hit her at school, ridiculed her and teased her," Tho Mai said through an interpreter.
She decided to leave Vietnam in 1983 when she heard about a program to allow families with Amerasian children go to the United States.
The authorities tore up her application and cursed her. She was classified as a "bad citizen," and officials and friends shunned her.
Despite the harassment, Tho Mai continued to press her application and got permission to leave when the Amerasian Homecoming Act cleared the way. By then she had married again. Her husband didn't leave with her because he was afraid to apply. Now, she says, he wants to join her, but authorities say it could take years.
Dat is one of two Amerasian brothers fathered by the same U.S. Air Force sergeant. Dat said his father's name is Dennis Mullins and that he's from Oklahoma. Mullins sent money and wrote his mother until 1975; they lost contact after the communist takeover. Dat doesn't know where his father is because all the letters and other identifying documents were destroyed to keep the communists from finding them.
Dat was reared by his uncle, Hue Huynh, 39, who adopted him and came with him to Roanoke. Dat's mother, Lan Huynh, arrived in the United States a few weeks earlier with Dat's Amerasian brother, Phat. They were placed at a resettlement center in Baltimore, but moved to Roanoke to live near Dat.
After the communists conquered South Vietnam, Huynh took in both Dat and Phat because the boys' mother, Lan, was unable to care for them. For a while after the takeover, the boys' hair and eyebrows were shaved so they wouldn't look Amerasian.
Huynh later adopted Dat, and Phat went back to live with his mother.
Vietnamese families are close, with several generations often living in the same house. When they left Vietnam, Dat said, his grandmother urged them to stay together.
Hue Huynh said he had a good life in Vietnam as a jewelry merchant near Saigon, but agreed to leave for Dat's sake and because he didn't like the communists' regulation of his business and life. He said he also was afraid his sons were going to be drafted and sent to war.
People told him gold hung from trees in America. Huynh said he didn't believe it. He knew he would have to work hard if he was to have any future in America.
"I don't think about the future for now, just work."
`I can do anything'
Barbara Smith mentally ran down a list of Roanoke companies that will hire refugees who speak little or no English.
Among the businesses are Cycle Systems, Roanoke Dyeing and Finishing, Maid Bess, L&M Valve and Louisville Scrap Material.
Louisville Scrap Material - LSM-Roanoke as they call it. The name sent a shiver through Smith. She didn't like LSM even before the January 1989 accident involving Linh Dinh, another Vietnamese refugee.
Dinh had worked at LSM for about nine months when the side of a railway car he was cutting apart for scrap fell on him and chopped through his legs. The acetylene torch he used to cut the metal remained on while he was trapped. It burned his leg away to the bone.
Dinh lost both legs, one above the knee and one below.
Five months after the accident, the state fined LSM $1,020 for safety violations in the accident.
Other refugee workers had complained about injuries at LSM. But arriving refugees continue to sign up with LSM because it pays up to $10 an hour with piecework, double what most refugees can earn in Roanoke.
Despite what happened to Linh Dinh, Smith couldn't talk Hue Huynh out of going to work for LSM. "I don't want him going there. I don't think it's safe," she said. "I don't think refugees should be taken by companies who can't get Americans to do the work because it's so unsafe."
But the money was more important to Hue Huynh. His first job here was with Cycle Systems, but he heard about LSM from his sponsor, Loc Pham, a Vietnam refugee who arrived in 1985 and makes good money at LSM.
Pham is also Linh Dinh's brother-in-law. Despite the injury to Linh Dinh, Pham encouraged Huynh to take the LSM job.
To Pham, Linh Dinh's injury was one of those unfortunate things that happens in a free society where people can choose to do what they want. Pham saw LSM as a way to get ahead. He said he earned as much as $500 to $600 a week, enough to buy a small ranch house in Northeast Roanoke and a used 1984 Audi 5000.
"I came to America five years ago," Pham said. "I didn't know nothing about America. When I came I just worked. Every day I came to work and I worked real hard. We saved money and we bought a house and then we had another baby. I like America. I can do anything. I came here with nothing. I looked. I learned. I understood."
Pham was so pleased with his success that he volunteered last year to help the refugee center by sponsoring an incoming family.
"When I came here people sponsor me, so now I want to sponsor someone and help them."
Pham's first job as a sponsor was Dat's family.
Finding a family
Good sponsors are hard to find, Barbara Smith says, and they are the key to success for the refugee resettlement office. Some sponsors become lifelong friends with the refugees. Others burn out quickly when they find out that refugees can demand a lot of time.
The refugees "latch on to the first person who greets them at the airport, and that's the sponsor," Smith said.
Some sponsors can't take the intensity.
"They think that being a sponsor is a simple matter of welcoming refugees here and helping them get their kids enrolled in school. They don't realize it's phone calls in the middle of the night from someone with a sick child, someone who can barely speak English. It's someone who can't read their own mail, and needs help using the bus."
Elmer and Sylvia Hall hadn't expected to end up as the sole sponsors for Trinh's family.
They volunteered to help last year when their minister at Parkway Wesleyan Church in Northeast Roanoke near Vinton signed up the church as a sponsor. The Halls thought they and other church members would take turns helping one family. But the minister left, no one else at the church pitched in other than with donations, and the Halls were left alone to sponsor Trinh's family.
Elmer is 73. Sylvia is 70. They weren't prepared for how much work they'd be doing. It was especially tough at first because Trinh's family needed help with everything. They had no money, couldn't speak English, and had no way to get around.
Hall admits he knew next to nothing about Vietnamese culture and lifestyle when he met Trinh, her mother and her sisters. From the moment he met them, Hall realized that even simple things weren't going to be simple. One of the first things he did was buy them groceries to get them started. He bought pounds of rice, only to find out they don't like American white rice.
But during a year of communicating with a few words of English and sign language, Elmer and Sylvia, who never had children, found the family they never had.
"We're grandparents now," Sylvia said. "They need us."
The feeling is shared. "I love Elmer and Sylvia," Trinh said recently.
Her mother, Tho Mai, was also grateful. When she gave birth to her first son, she wanted him to have an American middle name. She chose Elmer.
by CNB