A Vietnamese exchange student who married a U.S. citizen nonetheless is facing deportation because, as her husband says, she “tripped up” on the immigration process and is now in jail, reports KSTP-TV5 here.
Hoa Nguyen came to the U.S. on a student visa ten years ago, attending Luther College in Iowa where she met her future husband, Dan Hanson.
After graduating in 2003, the two of them moved to Minneapolis-St. Paul, where Hoa completed her Master’s in French Literature at the University of Minnesota.
In November 2008, they got married. Then they traveled to Vietnam and had their wedding there too.
All was well and good until they tried to enter the U.S. again and somebody noted that Hoa had not been going to school and so had overstayed her student visa, reports the Star-Tribune here. This is known as being “out of status” as tons and tons of other Vietnamese exchange students understand.
But she was allowed to re-enter the U.S. anyway, and she was given a court date to appear.
Then she missed that court date. So now she’s in jail waiting to be deported.
Her husband, friends and roommates have set up a web site called FreeHoa.org, where Hanson passionately pleads for his wife’s release.
Hanson says Hoa was confused about the court date and he, Hanson, wasn’t able to help her out because he didn’t know about any court date in the first place.
Hanson is also saying on the FreeHoa.org web site that the two of them are only now starting the process of getting Hoa a green card. Which means they didn’t do it the day after they got married. Which makes Hoa Nguyen the one and only person in her situation to act that way.
The web site does not say what kind of court hearing it was. The fact that Hoa is now in jail facing deportation leads the Bolsavik to speculate that maybe it was an order to show cause why Hoa should not be “removed” (from the U.S. that is). Possibly for being out of status.
That Hoa did not hire an army of lawyers to respond to the order to show cause (again, it’s only a speculation that that’s what the hearing’s for), that she didn’t tell Hanson about it, and that she managed to miss the whole thing, makes for a real head-scratcher.
But anyway, leaving aside these technicalities, it’s quite touching to see Hoa’s husband and friends moving heaven and earth to get her out of the hole she’s dug.
I, Hot Fat Mama, missed the deadline for a parking ticket, it led to a warrant of arrest and it costed this mama bunches of headaches and tons of money to untangle the mess.
So … don’t mess around with the legal system my friends.
Missing a court date, overstaying a visa, changing a legal status, etc., are just normal legal issues. These matters should not be pleaded in a public opinion forum; instead, an immigration lawyer should be consulted.
Many of Viets welcome the addition of several around-the-clock TV programs to a mixed bag of media in Little Saigon. I personally enjoy watching “Nguy Vu show”, “Hoa GamViet” by Viet Art Center and our “Meet the Press” …Oh yeah, unlike our “Ted Kennedy”.
In Viet communities, the media fall in love with advertising fees, which are usually a good indication they lack the balls to do what’s right. If they really took seriously the pride they claim in being journalists, they’d get people, despite the consequences, to follow them the right path – not waiting to see what path people intend to follow and then running behind shouting support.
China and Vietnam has a border dispute on land over “Ai Nam Quan” (the area fewer than 60 square km). Yes, the Chinese can rewrite history. They have a different calendar: it’s a rat one year and a cow the next. But from our history books, it has been called a “South gate”, never a “North gate”. The Vietnamese word “Nam = South” and “Quan = gate”. Naturally, a “South gate” belongs to a Northern country – China — and I’m not suggesting New Mexico belongs to Mexico.
Recently, the journalist Lu Giang went on our “Meet the Press” to say “Ai Nam Quan = the South gate” belongs to China. The point is , a journalist does what he thinks is right, not what he thinks the popular thing is.
And so we should do it our own.
The popular thing is “the heart wants what it wants.” I mean, what other force on earth, besides love and lust, could arise to “when Harry met Sally”. But the right thing is thousands of foreign nationals orderly pass under the welcoming armpit of the Statue of Liberty and you are basically saying “Things suck so bad in Vietnam that I actually prefer living in Iowa.” That’s too naive in this world. Not doing anything is doing something, and choosing to look away is a passive but no less mortal sin. The website may have its heart in the right place, but the reality is they’re protecting criminals at the expense of law-abiding people – and that’s the Mafia’s job!
So hasta la visa, you must plot?
this is a lie. Deport her!!!!!
So…is this woman a commie by birth and childhood? Or has her stay in the US driven the commie out of her? If she embraces the flag of SVN, does that mean that she is anti-commie? And what if she embraces both current and past flags of VN? What is she then?
So many factors and flags and the emotional baggage along with this issue…regardless, deport her for good measure…don’t know what these commies are up to.
Hahaha!
Why can’t the State Dept deport our venerable Assemblyman for being a scum to this society? That alone is worse than this female commie with red tape problem.
Keep the girl, send the venerable assembly man back to VN.
Send his girl friend Jung Kim too.