Vietnamese Teen Reunited With American Father, Family

Even in Los Angeles International Airport, where reunions are commonplace, heads turned Friday at the sight of the 17-year-old Amerasian girl running through the crowd with an ecstatic smile on her face.

Yelling “Poppa,” Nguyen Thi Dan Thao jumped into the arms of her father, Don Burges, 42, whom she had met for the first time only two months ago in Vietnam when he came looking for her.

Within seconds, two families became one. Dan Thao’s mother, Nguyen Thi Bach Nyu, stepfather Pham Vinh and four young brothers and sisters greeted Burges, his wife, Daniella Sapriel, and their daughter, Nicole, 6.

“Tell her we have waited a long time,” Burges said simply through the Vietnamese interpreter on hand for the reunion.

Burges, a Los Angeles construction company project manager, and his wife, who is an attorney, had spent seven agonizing and frustrating years trying to make this moment a reality.

Met in 1969

A former adviser with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Burges met Bach Nyu, a schoolteacher, while working in Vietnam in 1969. His daughter was born four months after he left the country in 1971. He lost contact with the family, but in 1981 ran into a former colleague who worked with him in Vietnam. That man had married a cousin of Bach Nyu’s, who knew where they were.

In 1982, Burges completed the legal work to acknowledge U.S. citizenship of his Amerasian daughter. (Children of servicemen and civilian employees who have worked abroad have citizenship status.)

But what followed, he said, was six years of “bureaucratic nightmares” trying to get her into the country even though she was a citizen.

There were an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 Amerasians left in Vietnam, and their immigration to the United States has for years been entangled in international politics.

Not until the early ‘80s, when visits to Vietnam by U.S. veterans’ groups called attention to the plight of the children there, did the United States begin a departure program. However, only about 85 Amerasian children from Vietnam have arrived in this country under the program.

In January of this year, the two governments agreed to resettle all Amerasian children in the United States within the next two years. About 8,000 Amerasians in Vietnam want to emigrate, according to officials for the Amerasian Registry, a San Jose-based group that helps such families reunite.

Burges contacted the registry last year, and in January, he and two other fathers who had lost patience with the red tape made an unprecedented trip into Vietnam with registry officials. The fathers were reunited briefly with their children, but returned without them pending more government paper work. Since then, one other American father has been reunited with his child in Vietnam.

When Burges met his daughter in Vietnam, she told him that she had been unhappy living without her father, but that now she feared coming to the United States without her mother and family. Burgess told her not to worry, that no one would be left behind.

Dan Thao’s Vietnamese family was able to come to this country under status as refugees accompanying a U.S. citizen. Catholic Charities of Los Angeles has obtained an apartment for the family and will help them with other social services, including helping Dan Thao’s stepfather find employment. Dan Thao at first will live with her Vietnamese family, but Burges hopes that she eventually will move in with his family.

As they left the airport, Burges looked at his other daughter, Nicole, who had joined arms with Dan Thao. “We’re all starting new lives,” he said.