Tribesmen Fear They’ll Never See Families : For Montagnards in U.S., Prosperity but Also Pain

In the year since he and 200 other Montagnard refugees from Vietnam arrived here, Y Suai Nie seemed to have it made. By putting in long hours six and sometimes seven days a week, the 35-year-old factory worker was able to buy a sports car, a television and a stereo, and he had several thousand dollars squirreled away in the bank.

But, last summer, Nie decided that life was no longer worth living. Grief-stricken that the woman he had married in a Thailand refugee camp had not been allowed to join him, he rose early one morning, wrapped himself in a red blanket and lay down on a busy Greensboro highway.

“When they (American immigration officials) tell me I cannot be with wife, I say, what does it matter, the car, my radio?” Nie said, recalling the failed suicide attempt. “And when the people pull me from street, I tell them I should die instead of being not with her.”

Nie’s ambivalence about his new life in America, after years of fighting Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge troops in the jungles of Southeast Asia, is echoed by many other Montagnards.

In less than 12 months, the members of the first group of tribesmen to escape from Vietnam’s central highlands and reach the United States have found steady work, good homes and a warm welcome from the community. But the refugees, a proud and stubborn people who fought alongside U.S. Green Berets during the Vietnam War, fear that they may never again see hundreds of loved ones still trapped in the violent Cambodian jungle or left behind in Vietnam. Facing an uncertain future, many feel isolated in their new homes.

“You have a word for this . . . the word is bittersweet,” said tribal leader Rmah Dock, looking back on the group’s first year in America. “We are happy and have done well. But there is much pain. We know there could be more.”

Faced with such isolation, the Montagnards decided recently to pool their resources and build a retirement home and cultural center for themselves. Fearful that they would never marry again and distrustful of American nursing homes, the refugees, most of them adult men, wanted to ensure that they would at least grow old with one another and die in friendly surroundings.

“We look ahead, and we do not know what will happen to many of us,” Dock said. “But one day we will die . . . that is what we know.”

Arrived at Thanksgiving

When the 201 tribesmen arrived here last Thanksgiving, amid great patriotic fanfare, the individuals and charity groups who had fought to bring them to America predicted a great future. In one welcoming ceremony after another, U.S. immigration officials, local church sponsors and former Green Berets said that the Montagnards’ long nightmare had finally ended.

At the time, few of the battle-scarred refugees disagreed.

Since the beginning of World War II, the small, dark-skinned tribesmen had been persecuted by the Japanese and French, and later by South Vietnamese officials, who viewed the reclusive hill people as savages and tried to drive them out out of their fertile ancestral homelands.

During the Vietnam War, many Montagnards sided with U.S. troops, particularly Green Berets, in the hope that they would be allowed to live in peace after the conflict ended. But, when North Vietnamese troops triumphed in 1975, thousands of Montagnards were killed and many of their leaders were thrown into prison.

200 Reached Thailand

A group of about 5,000 tribesmen decided to fight back, some believing they were doing a favor to the U.S. government. But they suffered major military setbacks and were driven out of Vietnam and into the jungles of Cambodia. There, thousands were killed and many more were taken captive by Khmer Rouge troops. In 1985, more than 200 Montagnards escaped and found their way to a sprawling refugee camp on the Thailand border known as Site II.

At first, the tribesmen languished in the camp with nearly 150,000 other refugees who could not safely return to Vietnam or Cambodia. But, last year, the U.S. State Department granted permission for the Montagnards to come to America as a special case, largely as a result of a public relations campaign waged by Green Beret organizations and several private citizens who remembered the Montagnards’ role in the war effort.

Some of the refugees, like Nie, were not allowed to bring along wives they had married in refugee camps, in part because of Thai regulations that barred U.S. refugee specialists from conducting interviews with the women. Others had been cut off from family members in Vietnam for 10 years or more. But all believed the U.S. government would repay their past loyalty by reuniting them with their families.

“If you think of what these people have been through, it’s amazing they survived,” said Donald Scott, a Maine businessman who lobbied to bring the Montagnards here. “They deserve everything that’s been done for them in this country, and a lot more.”

Given Factory Jobs

Within days of their arrival, the tribesmen were enrolled in English classes, given medical exams and assigned to apartments in Greensboro, as well as neighboring Charlotte and Raleigh. More important, Lutheran Family Services and Catholic Charities representatives who were in charge of the Montagnard resettlement program began placing the refugees in factory jobs.

The two groups had persuaded U.S. immigration officials to send the Montagnards to North Carolina because of the surplus of entry-level jobs there. They guaranteed that few of the refugees would go on welfare, and that promise has been kept, said Raleigh Bailey, who directs the project for the Lutheran group.

“Virtually all of the Montagnard adults have been given jobs, and they are doing quite well,” said Bailey, citing statistics that the refugees generate a collective annual income of $2,065,500, of which almost $300,000 goes to federal taxes.

Most of the jobs involve manual labor and pay $3.50 to $6 an hour, but they have enabled the refugees to gain some measure of financial independence--and pride--in a hurry. Meanwhile, employers are “raving” about their newest workers, who have taken jobs that many Americans reject, said Andy Cline, an employment specialist with Lutheran Family Services.

Punctual and Productive

In a noisy factory outside Greensboro, for example, supervisor JoAnn King lavishly praised Y Nduh Knul, 28, as he operated a riveting machine to make joints for the springs in hideabeds. Although the work is dull and repetitious, Knul is more punctual and productive than many American workers on the assembly line, she said.

The Montagnards have also worked hard to improve their English skills, which, for most, are barely adequate for simple conversation. Many of them attend intensive language classes three nights a week, often at the end of exhausting work days, and study at home on weekends.

During a recent session in Greensboro’s First Lutheran Church, instructor Ariel Collins asked a class of advanced students why it was important for them to learn English, and the group replied without hesitation: “So we can make money.”

During the lessons, personal problems that the soft-spoken Montagnards are reluctant to express are sometimes disclosed. In one session about drunk driving laws, Collins gently scolded one refugee who said he likes to drink while cruising at high speeds.

“Sometimes people drink to cover problems . . . they drink to be in hiding,” the man said in reply. “I am sorry if I have done this.”

50% Have Autos

Automobiles are posing other problems as well, according to Pierre K’Briuh, a Montagnard who arrived in America three years ago and now oversees the day-to-day activities of the North Carolina group. More than 50% of the refugees have cars, but few are expert drivers, he noted.

Last week, K’Briuh was awakened at 2 a.m. by an emergency call about one of the refugees, who had been in a car accident. He rushed to the hospital and found the man suffering from a ruptured spleen and internal bleeding.

As it turned out, the Montagnard had ignored a “yield” sign and collided with an oncoming van, which suffered more than $2,000 damage. K’Briuh said there have been other car accidents as well, because “many of our drivers, they do not see the signs. I am afraid for them.”

All of these problems pale, however, in comparison with the Montagnards’ fears that they may never see loved ones again. The separation from wives, children and other family members is “a painful thing for them to accept, and many of them still do not accept it,” K’Briuh said.

Many of the refugees keep their grief to themselves and are reluctant to discuss it with strangers. In the lush farming country outside Greensboro, for example, Audrey Vinson sometimes sees the refugees who work for her gardening company weeping quietly in the fields.

The reality that a separation from family members could be permanent “may just be dawning on them . . . . We just try to be as sympathetic as we can and cheer them up,” she said.

As he relaxed in the living room of his Greensboro home, Siu Hlong, 29, said that he has lost contact with his brothers, sisters, father and aunt, who are somewhere in the Cambodian jungle. Many of the refugees are “nearly crazy” with grief over missing family members, he added.

‘We Need Children’

“We need families, we need children,” Hlong said, fingering the frets of a small guitar on which he plays Vietnamese folk songs. “Maybe this will not be.”

The key problem, K’Briuh said, is that there are no Montagnards on the list of refugees officially approved to leave Vietnam under the United Nation’s Orderly Departure Program. The list of those waiting to leave their homeland is long and “we Montagnards are at the bottom of that list,” he noted.

But others refuse to lose heart.

As he sat on a rickety chair in his living room and nervously smoked a cigarette, Y Suai Nie translated aloud the most recent letter he received from his wife in the Site II refugee camp. Thach Thi Chanda, a 28-year old Cambodian woman, sounded depressed about the camp’s Spartan living conditions but hopeful that she would soon be reunited with her husband.

‘Major Snafu’ Charged

Scott, the Maine businessman, who has maintained contact with the Montagnards over the last year, charged that the separation was “a major snafu” on the part of the U.S. and Thai governments. He said immigration officials had promised him that the Montagnards would be allowed to take their wives with them when they left the refugee camp for America.

For their part, U.S. officials say they are trying to reunite Nie and several other Montagnards with their wives but have run into difficulties with Thai officials, who sometimes prevent American refugee specialists from conducting interviews at the Site II camp.

“We are trying to make this happen,” said Sheppie Abramowitz, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Refugee Resettlement. “But it may not happen immediately.”

Meanwhile, Nie continues to hope for the best.

“I do not want to live lonely,” he said, putting down his wife’s letter. “In America, we have much. But, for me, the heart is breaking.”