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Vietnamese American refugees who witnessed fall of Saigon urge U.S. to accept more Afghans
Aug. 19, 2021, 7:21 AM CST / Updated Aug. 20, 2021, 9:09 PM CST
By Claire Wang
On April 30, 1975, Thanh Duong scaled the 14-foot wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. Duong, a civil engineer for the South Vietnamese government, had worked closely with the Americans during the Vietnam War. He knew he would be punished should the communists capture the capital.
Climbing into the embassy had been a last resort. Duong had exhausted every other avenue of escape: looking for a boat through connections in the navy, seeking help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, finding shelter in shuttered military housing.
“I failed at every channel,” said Duong, 76, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. “I was so frightened. I was thinking to myself, ‘I won’t be able to get out.’”
Eventually, with the help of U.S. reporters, Duong was admitted inside the building, where he waited in agony for hours before he was airlifted out of the country by a military helicopter. In subsequent years, nine of Duong’s siblings would join him in the U.S. Their children now live all across the country.
On Monday, while watching viral video of desperate Afghans clinging onto a U.S. military jet, Duong began reliving one of the worst days of his life.
“When I saw the scenes from the news from pictures and videos,” he said, “I was just devastated. It’s complete chaos, just as it was in 1975.”
For Vietnamese Americans, the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and end two decades of conflict triggers painful memories of another two-decade war a half-century ago. Since the Taliban seized Kabul, many refugees and their descendants have been recounting perilous escapes from Saigon and calling on Biden to immediately admit as many Afghan refugees as possible.
Witnessing the strife of Afghans is “heart-wrenching for families who escaped Saigon,” said Duong’s niece Minh-Thu Pham, a board member of the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, which is known as PIVOT. “We know the desperation, the loss of homeland and fear and panic they must be feeling.”
Pham, who helped draft an official statement on PIVOT’s behalf, urged Biden to remove the cap on the number of Afghan refugee visas and Special Immigrant Visas. Unlike her uncle, Pham’s father was fighting for the South Vietnamese army when Saigon fell. He was sent to a re-education camp for several years before he was able to flee by boat.
A slew of right-wing pundits and Republican lawmakers have deployed the Saigon comparisons to frame the Afghanistan crisis as a foreign policy debacle for Democrats. Pham said the finger-pointing is dangerous.
“It’s unfair to say this is ‘Biden’s Saigon,’ because it feels like politicizing the situation,” she said. “What we need to do is recognize the human consequences of war.”
Kham Moua, the director of national policy at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, said the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan is “very reminiscent” of the U.S.’s chaotic exit from Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s.
“There’s a large emphasis on Vietnam,” he said, “but we saw the same scenes in Cambodia and Laos. We saw photos of people scrambling to get on planes and boats.”
Aug. 19, 2021, 7:21 AM CST / Updated Aug. 20, 2021, 9:09 PM CST
By Claire Wang
On April 30, 1975, Thanh Duong scaled the 14-foot wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, South Vietnam. Duong, a civil engineer for the South Vietnamese government, had worked closely with the Americans during the Vietnam War. He knew he would be punished should the communists capture the capital.
Climbing into the embassy had been a last resort. Duong had exhausted every other avenue of escape: looking for a boat through connections in the navy, seeking help from the U.S. Agency for International Development, finding shelter in shuttered military housing.
“I failed at every channel,” said Duong, 76, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee. “I was so frightened. I was thinking to myself, ‘I won’t be able to get out.’”
Eventually, with the help of U.S. reporters, Duong was admitted inside the building, where he waited in agony for hours before he was airlifted out of the country by a military helicopter. In subsequent years, nine of Duong’s siblings would join him in the U.S. Their children now live all across the country.
On Monday, while watching viral video of desperate Afghans clinging onto a U.S. military jet, Duong began reliving one of the worst days of his life.
“When I saw the scenes from the news from pictures and videos,” he said, “I was just devastated. It’s complete chaos, just as it was in 1975.”
For Vietnamese Americans, the aftermath of President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan and end two decades of conflict triggers painful memories of another two-decade war a half-century ago. Since the Taliban seized Kabul, many refugees and their descendants have been recounting perilous escapes from Saigon and calling on Biden to immediately admit as many Afghan refugees as possible.
Witnessing the strife of Afghans is “heart-wrenching for families who escaped Saigon,” said Duong’s niece Minh-Thu Pham, a board member of the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization, which is known as PIVOT. “We know the desperation, the loss of homeland and fear and panic they must be feeling.”
Pham, who helped draft an official statement on PIVOT’s behalf, urged Biden to remove the cap on the number of Afghan refugee visas and Special Immigrant Visas. Unlike her uncle, Pham’s father was fighting for the South Vietnamese army when Saigon fell. He was sent to a re-education camp for several years before he was able to flee by boat.
A slew of right-wing pundits and Republican lawmakers have deployed the Saigon comparisons to frame the Afghanistan crisis as a foreign policy debacle for Democrats. Pham said the finger-pointing is dangerous.
“It’s unfair to say this is ‘Biden’s Saigon,’ because it feels like politicizing the situation,” she said. “What we need to do is recognize the human consequences of war.”
Kham Moua, the director of national policy at the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, said the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Afghanistan is “very reminiscent” of the U.S.’s chaotic exit from Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s.
“There’s a large emphasis on Vietnam,” he said, “but we saw the same scenes in Cambodia and Laos. We saw photos of people scrambling to get on planes and boats.”
