A Tale of Two Sisters : One in U.S. Struggles to Save Other in Limbo of Thai Refugee Camp

They last saw each other on the Cambodian border in November of 1979, two sisters whose lives took unexpectedly divergent paths.

One sister, Dary Nou, and her family chose to make the dangerous border crossing into Thailand. United Nations-assisted refugee camps had been set up there in the wake of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia that toppled the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge cadres. Thousands of Cambodian refugees in the border camps eventually would be resettled in the United States and other nations. Dary and her husband, Meng Seak, didn’t know much about the United States, but they knew it was the “freedom country.”

The other sister, Sarum Nou, stayed behind with her husband, two other sisters and their mother, who had become ill on the long walk to the border. They told Meng and Dary that they would try to cross later when it was safer.

Their decision to stay behind has made a world of difference in the lives that the two families now lead.

After spending nearly two years in a refugee camp on the Thai border, Dary, Meng and their 5-year-old daughter, Eng, were processed and sent, via the Philippines, to the United States. Eventually, they moved to Long Beach in their quest for a share of the American pie.

Sarum and their other relatives, however, weren’t as fortunate.

By the time they crossed into Thailand in 1984, the Thai government no longer was processing refugees for resettlement. Stuck in a border camp, provided with food, shelter and little else, they are classified as “displaced persons.” Unable to register as formal refugees or to be interviewed for potential third-country resettlement, they live in a limbo of uncertainty.

Dary’s only link with her mother, sisters and brother are the monthly letters she receives from Sarum, letters that describe the hardships that her family must endure.

Their only hope of getting out is Dary.

The Thai government occasionally allows certain families and individuals to leave the camp for resettlement in another country if they have a close relative living there who will sponsor them.

Dary has gone to the Santa Ana office of the International Rescue Committee, a nondenominational voluntary agency, and filled out the preliminary paper work for filing an immigrant visa petition.

But it is not that simple.

In order to proceed, Dary first must become a U.S. citizen.

She has met the five-year residency requirement, but before she can apply for naturalization she must be able to read, write and speak enough English to pass the U.S. government and history test administered by the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

For Dary, who still speaks only a little English, that is proving to be a major hurdle.

But even when Dary learns enough English to take the citizenship test, “it takes a long time in Southern California to become a U.S. citizen because the INS is absolutely swamped here,” said Alicia Cooper, Orange County area director of the International Rescue Committee, one of six voluntary agencies in the county that resettle refugees. INS officials say it takes three to four months after submitting a citizenship application to receive an appointment for a preliminary interview.

And even then, Cooper said, Dary has “a major problem” if she wants to bring all of her relatives here.

“When you apply” for an immigration visa petition, Cooper said, “you must prove you’re able to support this person, or persons . . . and that they will not (end up on) public welfare.”

The New York City-based International Rescue Committee, founded in 1933, has helped to resettle refugees in Orange County since 1975, when waves of Vietnamese arrived at Camp Pendleton after the fall of Saigon. Although there are no U.S. Census Bureau statistics on the number of Southeast Asians in this country, Cooper said there are an estimated 70,000 in Orange County, the majority of whom are Vietnamese.

Southern California, however, is home to more Cambodians than any other area of the country, an estimated 70,000. Long Beach, with 35,000, has the third-highest concentration of Cambodians in the world, according to the United Cambodian Community, a nonprofit organization in Long Beach that serves all refugees. Only the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and the border camp in Thailand where Dary’s relatives live, called Site 2, have more.

About 50% of the refugees arriving in Orange County through IRC are Southeast Asians (mostly Vietnamese) and about 50% are Eastern Europeans and Soviets, Cooper said. Although few Cambodian refugees have arrived in Orange County in recent years because of Thailand’s policy of containing them in border camps, Cooper said the committee’s Santa Ana office has filing cabinets full of affidavits of relationship from Cambodians, which is the basic paper work involved in matching a refugee in the camp with a relative in the United States.

“There are hundreds of people here that are in pretty much the same position” as Dary, Cooper said, adding that preference is given to spouses and unmarried children. “There is a very long wait for visas for brothers and sisters,” she said--a backlog that goes back to 1982.

But in Dary and Sarum’s case, there is a sense of urgency.

Sarum’s recent letters carry a message of desperation, of fear.

Her former husband, a soldier with the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, a non-Communist group opposing the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, has been visiting the camp, pressuring Sarum to return to him. That he has two other wives and children makes no difference. When Sarum refuses to go with him, her letters say, he beats her and lately has been threatening to kill her.

Sarum fears that her former husband will carry out his threat. And if Dary can’t bring the entire family to the United States at the same time, she asks that Dary bring her to America first.

A makeshift clothesline strung from post to post on the second-floor balcony pointed the way to the tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Long Beach shared by Dary, Meng and their three children. In the dirt below, a young Cambodian woman holding a baby talked quietly to two older Cambodian women tending their small vegetable gardens.

At the far end of the tread-worn balcony--past the assortment of shoes and sandals lined up outside each apartment--was an open front door.

Inside, Meng and Dary greeted their two visitors warmly, offering their guests the best seat in the room: their 5-year-old son Robert’s bed next to the front door. With no trace of embarrassment, Meng and Dary sat on purple plastic children’s chairs.

Less than five 5 of lime green carpet separated their son’s bed from their own, which was hidden discreetly behind a thin white curtain. A counter with a TV on top divided the living area from the kitchen, which included a refrigerator and a sink. There was no stove, just a countertop two-burner “Buffet Range.” Flanking the refrigerator were two doors, one leading to the bathroom; the other to a small bedroom shared by daughter Solina, 7, and Eng, now 13, who was quietly doing her homework.

The apartment had been their home since they arrived in Long Beach last October from Utica, N.Y., where they had been living since coming to the United States in 1982.

As Meng talked about the odyssey that led them from the killing fields of Cambodia to Long Beach, Robert, dressed in blue kung fu T-shirt and jeans, played on the balcony with a friend. Robert, who was born in this country, is named in honor of their sponsor, Roberta Douglas of Utica. Douglas sent Meng and Dary to an English-as-a-second-language class for six months after they arrived in Utica. Learning English was difficult for Meng, “but I studied very hard,” he said. Dary, who has less education, found the lessons much tougher.

But life was good in Utica.

Meng earned $7 an hour working as a presser in a laundry. They lived in a three-bedroom apartment. They were able to buy a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass--a Cutlass “Supreme,” Meng made a point of adding. And every few months, they were able to send $50 or $100 to Dary’s family in the border camp so that they could buy food on the black market to supplement their meager ration of rice, fish and soybeans.

But the bitter New York winters took their toll on Dary’s health.

“I like Utica,” Dary said, “but I don’t like snow; too cold.”

“That’s why we move over here,” Meng said.

The move to California was prompted by a phone call from a Cambodian friend living in Long Beach. Meng and Dary have found the Southern California weather agreeable. “Good weather. The same as my country,” Meng commented.

Yet they have not been happy with the move to Long Beach.

“We don’t like it here because too much trouble,” Meng said.

He explained that they have been harassed by American street youths. “Like one day when I walk they ask me if I have some quarters. If you don’t have the money, they talk the bad word. Or they hit.” One of his Cambodians friends who refused to hand over his money was beaten up, Meng said.

“I’m scared outside,” Dary said. “In Utica, I can walk happy.”

To come to California, they had to sell their car. But when the $4,600 Meng got for the car was gone, they went on welfare.

“I look for a job, but around here they pay me not enough money,” Meng said, adding that a job pressing clothes here pays only $3.50 an hour. “I can’t find a good job to support family because they pay cheap.”

They also didn’t realize how expensive it would be to live in California. In Utica, Meng said, they paid only $200 a month for a three-bedroom apartment. Their tiny, two-room Long Beach apartment cost $400 a month in rent and utilities. Living on an $859 welfare check each month and $116 in Food Stamps every two weeks, they could no longer afford to send money to Dary’s family in Thailand.

Sarum’s monthly letters are a constant reminder of what her family is going through.

The Site 2 camp is overcrowded, with more than 162,000 Cambodians and 2,000 Vietnamese living in an area covering less than 2 square miles. The perimeter of the camp is fenced with barbed wire and is guarded by nearly 200 paramilitary Thai rangers.

Dary’s mother, three sisters, brother and their own families--16 people in all--live in a small bamboo hut with a dirt floor. Each person is allotted only 1 square meter of living space. They sleep on raised bamboo platforms that double as chairs and share a single outhouse toilet with nearly a dozen other families.

At Site 2, where one-fourth of the population is under 5 years of age and half are under 17--a child is born every hour on average. Malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia and diarrhea are common medical problems. Sarum writes that their 57-year-old mother is frequently ill and is partially paralyzed, causing her to drag her foot when she walks. At night, their mother often cries in her sleep, Sarum writes, and longs to be with Dary and Eng, and the two grandchildren she has never seen.

There is no privacy and little to do in the camp. Sarum works as a seamstress for the Khmer Women’s Assn., a camp organization that sponsors education, skills training and fabric production. But for the vast majority of Cambodians living in the camp, their days are unproductive and aimless. And increasingly stressful.

Volunteers at the camp say that domestic violence--husbands beating wives--is on the rise, as are suicides and fights between neighbors. There are also reports of rape and murder by the Thai rangers who guard them.

“A lot of soldier people over there got power,” Meng explained. “They can do anything they want. If they want too many wife, it’s up to them. If they want to steal your watch or ring, they can take. They can do anything without law.”

Shelling from Vietnamese positions along the border poses a constant threat.

Although the people living in Site 2 are survivors and have learned to cope, volunteers report a sense of despair and hopelessness as they await a possible political solution that would let them return in peace to their country.

One of Meng and Dary’s visitors who had recently visited the Site 2 camp in Thailand handed them a letter that Sarum had written.

With Dary and their three children gathered next to him, Meng silently began reading the letter to himself.

The expression on his face grew serious as he turned the pages. At one point, he rubbed tears from his eyes.

When he was done, he said the letter did not contain good news.

“She told me that if I can bring them here, she want to come first. . . . And my mother-in-law, she want her (Sarum) to come first too. She said Sarum will die some day because her husband wants her to be with him and she doesn’t want it.”

Meng shook his head.

“I don’t know how I can bring her here. . . ,” he said. “I don’t know how long it take my wife to be a citizen. But she will. . .” His voice trailed off. “But my sister-in-law said she need hurry.”

Not long after they were interviewed, Meng and Dary began a new chapter in their American odyssey.

An unexpected job offer, in the Arizona machine shop where a Cambodian friend of Meng’s works, prompted the family to pack up and move to Tucson. In a telephone interview this week, Meng said he now earns $5 an hour as a machine operator and they are living in a two-bedroom house that costs only $195 a month.

“We all like it here,” he said. “When we go shopping and buy food, everything is cheap.”

Dary has already applied to a school that teaches English as a second language and Meng said that she may begin classes next week.

Alicia Cooper of the International Rescue Committee has suggested another option for Dary to pursue on behalf of her sister Sarum. Now that Meng has a job, Cooper said the family could apply for a Humanitarian Parole. These paroles may be granted under extenuating circumstances, such as when a person’s life is in extreme danger. Dary’s family would have to be able to support Sarum, Cooper said, but Dary would not have to be a U.S. citizen to bring her sister here. The procedure takes six to 15 months.

Times staff photographer Kari Rene Hall spent six weeks in Thailand last spring researching the plight of children in Thai border camps. While there, she met Sarum Nou. Hall contributed to this report on Sarum and sister Dary.