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.

A naturalization ceremony with, what, eight people? (Including one Viet, Tam Diep Nguyen, by the way.)

Eight?!?

Where are the rest of the fuh-ree-ners?

In comparison, after the jump are some photos the Bolsavik took of a naturalization ceremony in Los Angeles in September 2007.

Here’s part of the line outside the Convention Center:

Here’s the crowd making its way upstairs.

There are seven blocks of chairs like this. Third from right, with a scout’s hat on his lap, is a Vietnamese, Sergeant Kiet Nguyen.

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