SANTA ANA : Office for Refugees Must Move

The city has declared a single-car garage off limits to a Vietnamese refugee group that has used the structure as a headquarters for newly arrived political prisoners from Southeast Asia.

Santa Ana officials “called (Sept. 26) and said we have two more months, then we must move the office,” said Hau Nguyen, chairman of the Viet Nam Political Detainees Mutual Assn. The group sponsors former detainees and their families and resettles them in the county.

“It’s basically a zoning issue,” said David Hermance, a coordinator with the city’s planning and building department. “You’re not supposed to have a commercial office in a residential zoning.”

But Nguyen contends that the tiny headquarters, its walls adorned with photos of families who have been resettled in Orange County, is not a commercial office, and members recently wrote to city officials asking for special consideration. The garage also contains just enough room for four desks and a reception area where guests and donors are sometimes served tea.

“We want to reserve the space in the (attached apartment) for the families, and we have no where to go for the office,” said Nguyen, whose group struggles to support itself with donations and fund-raisers.

The four-bedroom apartment serves as temporary housing for up to five families at a time. With the large numbers of new arrivals needing living space, the group’s members do not want to merge the office into the apartment.

Currently, 14 people representing three families live in the apartment, and another family of seven is scheduled to arrive at the end of the month, volunteers said.

These refugees, mostly former South Vietnamese military officers and government officials, are coming as a result of a 1989 agreement between the United States and Vietnam that allows political prisoners released from re-education camps to leave for resettlement in the United States.

Nearly 5,000 of them and their estimated 18,000 family members have arrived in the country, according to the State Department’s Bureau for Refugee Program. About 14,000 have settled in California and more than 400 are in Orange County, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Statistics on the number of accompanying family members coming to the state are not available.

Close to 100,000 former detainees and their family members are on the waiting list to enter the United States, according to Pamela Lewis, a bureau official.

The political detainees organization has already sponsored and resettled 72 former prisoners and their estimated 580 family members, according to members. About 3,000 remain on a waiting list to be sponsored by the group, 2,500 of whom are in refugee camps.