Lost in legal limbo, Vietnamese children of American servicemen are lobbying Congress for passage of the Amerasian Paternity Act, which would give them the same rights granted to all other children of all Americans: U.S. Citizenship.
The story of their lobbying is told in touching details by the L.A. Times‘ My-Thuan Tran in a Column One story here.
The children of U.S. military who fought in Vietnam, casually called Amerasians, are given the right to enter the U.S. That right, however, has given rise to instances of fraud and, in some cases, schemes that come perilously close to human trafficking.
Even that, though, is still just half the story. The other half is, once they’re in the country, they’re stuck. They have no right for citizenship, no matter how long they’re here. All legal immigrants, their passport status becomes no better than that of undocumented aliens.
My-Thuan’s story centers around Randy Tran, a singer, best known for the song “After the War” (in Vietnamese: Sau Cuoc Chien) about the one consequence of the war that not a lot of people pay attention to: The Amerasians and their heritage.
My-Thuan’s story also marks the first time the Bolsavik learns of Randy’s last name — another sign of how the stories of Amerasians tend to be ignored by people who consider themselves of “pure” Viet blood. Perhaps not ignored with malice, but ignored nonetheless.
Below the jump is a YouTube video of Randy singing “After the War.”
I feel for the Amerasians. They were looked down upon during and after the war by their “own” people. I swear the Viets are the most prejudiced people on Earth but they always complain being prejudiced against by others!!!!!!!!!!!
When a people divided themselves into many hostile groups (pro-French, anti-French, pro-communist, anti-communist, pro-monarchy, anti-monarchy, pro-western religion, anti-western religion, pro-this, anti-this, pro-that, anti-that, etc.,) and fought and killed one another, and then advocated for revenge and continuing fighting, and cheated, and lied, and manipulated others shamelessly…, then the MORALITY of that people is in question.
We all need to support the effort to grant U.S. citizenship to the Amerasians. They have endured much hardship. It is the right thing to do morally speaking.