‘3 Musketeers’ Help O.C.’s Vietnamese

They escaped Vietnam as boys after Saigon fell to the advancing North Vietnamese army in 1975. Separately, the three refugees came to North America, where they would flourish and graduate from elite universities.

Today, this trio of activist attorneys donate their spare time as advisors, educators and mediators, moving and shaking Orange County’s Vietnamese immigrant community into mainstream America.

“We can speak two languages equally well and understand the mentality and standards of both communities,” said Van Thai Tran, who with Lan Quoc Nguyen and Kinh-Luan Tran are known affectionately around Little Saigon as the “Three Musketeers” for their seemingly tireless efforts on behalf of Vietnamese here and abroad.

They mediated between police and protesters during 53 days of tense, sometimes violent demonstrations over the display of the Vietnamese Communist flag in a Westminster video store in early 1999.

They intervened when a group planned a book burning of Communist texts last month to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

They draft letters, send faxes and make proposals to Congress on behalf of non-English-speaking community leaders. They also lobby hard for changes in U.S. immigration law and for human rights in Vietnam.

And their voter registration drives have brought substantial numbers of Vietnamese Americans into the U.S. political process.

Last week, 11 years of sweat and struggle to unsnarl international red tape paid off when they reunited Hieu Ngo and his 13-year-old son, stateless refugees stranded in a camp in the Philippines since 1989, with relatives in Mission Viejo.

“I would not be here without their help,” said an excited Ngo, 37, as he was reunited with his brother early Friday at Los Angeles International Airport. “I don’t know how to thank them enough.”

It’s the least they can do, say the attorneys, who met years ago through their involvement in various community causes.

“I was one of them, so now it’s time to help them,” said Lan Quoc Nguyen, 36, of Garden Grove, a graduate of Hastings Law School in Northern California with a successful private practice in Westminster. His claim to fame is raising nearly $1 million for refugees and victims of a massive 1999 flood in central Vietnam.

“I want to see my people with a better life,” said Nguyen, who, like Ngo, escaped Vietnam by boat.

A teenager when he fled Saigon in 1979, he was one of 28 people crowded into a rickety fishing boat. The vessel leaked oil and soon they ran out of fuel and drinking water on the high seas. After seven days, the group was able to make a deal with a passing boat, getting enough fuel, food and water to land in Malaysia. There, Nguyen spent a year with 40,000 refugees in a squalid camp that sprawled over one square kilometer.

Next door in the same Westminster office building is the firm of Van Thai Tran, 35, the second attorney and a planning commissioner in Garden Grove. Tran says it’s important for second-generation professionals like him to “bridge the gap” between Vietnamese immigrants and the larger society.

“The Vietnamese community is now an integral part of society, and in order to grow and progress, the community as a whole must assimilate and work well with the mainstream community,” Tran said.

The child of a prominent South Vietnamese family that fled Vietnam by airplane in 1975, Tran began his activism in the mid-1980s. As a student at UC Irvine, he became a founding member of Project Ngoc, an advocacy group that helps refugees resettle in the United States.

Later, as an aide to former Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan, Tran learned the ropes of the legislative process at the local, state and national levels.

These days, when he’s not working on a legal case, he’s trying to influence legislation that could affect Vietnamese immigrants. He arms activists with documents and petitions he ghostwrites to lobby in Washington, D.C., for restrictions on trade with Vietnam, for human rights and for changes in immigration law.

Working with them on these and other causes is the third lawyer, Kinh Luan Tran, 29, who left Vietnam in 1981, spent a year in a refugee camp in the Philippines, then emigrated to Canada, later graduating from Harvard Law School.

He believes Vietnamese immigrants--those who came to the United States shortly after the war as well as those who continue to trickle out of refugee camps in Asia--need help navigating a strange culture and society.

“Especially the recently arrived immigrants, they need to know more about the legal and political system in this country,” he said. “Sometimes these people don’t fully understand their rights and obligations and the American law.”

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Activist Thanh Thu Nguyen credits the lawyers for helping merge the Vietnamese immigrant community with the larger society.

“They’ve been very beneficial in the community because they educate it slowly,” said Nguyen, 43, of Anaheim, who became an activist after hearing the trio speak against the forced repatriation of refugees to Vietnam. “The community looks at them as genuine people who really want to help.”

Many Vietnamese Americans didn’t know about their voting power because they were too occupied trying to make a living, she said. That changed after the attorneys spearheaded voter registration drives on the weekends and stressed the importance of voting, especially using materials in Vietnamese.

“They’ve taken on so many things that they have became so known,” she said.

During last year’s massive demonstrations in Little Saigon, the attorneys were mediators between police and protesters. They sought to prevent misunderstandings and explained to protesters their rights. Last month’s planned book burning was averted after Lan Quoc Nguyen, through intermediaries, advised demonstration leaders to drop the idea.

“There was political implications to the community,” Nguyen said. “Someone needed to explain to them that it would harm the community’s image [rather] than help it.”

To Ngo and his son Peter, the attorneys are his saviors. The trio, working with Hoi Trinh, an Australian lawyer, managed to overcome bureaucratic barriers on both sides of the Pacific blocking Ngo, who has no identification papers and is considered stateless.

It took nearly a dozen years, and there was brief panic when customs officials at LAX appeared unwilling to let him into the United States. But shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, Ngo and his son stepped out of the customs area and was reunited with his long-lost brother, Joseph, who lives in Mission Viejo.

Ngo knew the attorneys by name only, but he rushed into the welcoming arms of Van Thai Tran, Lan Quoc Nguyen and Hoi Trinh as if they were old friends.

“I am so happy to be here! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” he told them in Vietnamese, squeezing each one tightly with both arms.

They were overjoyed yet mindful that there are others like Ngo languishing as stateless people, and a second generation learning about life from the confines of a refugee camp.

“You can help us in return by having Peter speak to youths about his experiences in the camps,” Lan Quoc Nguyen said. “So people will understand why help is needed.”