Family Reunion

some shall pass: Though her parents' visa petitions were approved, Nga Do still doesn't know when they can emigrate to the area.
Photo By: Michael T. Regan

A local human-trafficking victim will soon rescue her parents from Vietnam.

by Helen i-lin Hwang

In the six years since Nga Do last saw her parents, she's been through hell and back. A victim of human trafficking – the illicit and immoral practice of shipping people around the world as cheap labor or sex-industry workers – Do has called Upper Darby home since 2001 [Cover story, "The New Face of Slavery," Helen i-lin Hwang with Brian Hickey, Dec. 2, 2004]. Each December week after the article appeared, Do heard good news about another friend who was in the same predicament. But as each heard of visas being approved for their families, Do was left waiting.

Finally, on Feb. 1, it was Do's turn as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved the petitions that will allow her parents to emigrate from Vietnam to live with their daughter. Do's voice cracked with tearful emotion when this reporter informed her that her parents' applications were approved. She hadn't spoken to her attorney yet who had received the letter from USCIS. The news, says Do, who works in a nail salon owned by the family that took her in, makes her "feel good." Still, she won't start celebrating "because parents not here yet," she adds in broken English.

Since City Paper first reported the problem with human-trafficking victims and the government's failure to keep their promise to protect the families of victims left behind in native countries, USCIS has approved eight petitions for victims' relatives in the local area that had previously beeng denied, including six for parents and two for younger siblings. Their current attorney, Arnold Feldman, enthuses the "cases were approved through the advocacy work of journalism. Plus, Immigration decided to do the right thing."

Do is the last of several victims who had their visa applications expedited.

Two months after finding out about the visas, Do is more circumspect because she still has no idea when her parents will arrive. She's left to grapple with several questions, including how to find them jobs when she can't tell a boss when they can start. She also worries what kind of positions they can get.

"It's hard to find a job. But right now, they're not here. When they come over, they will look. Can't plan too much," she anxiously cautions. To the suggestion her parents also become manicurists, she nervously responds, "I don't think my father can do it. Don't think a like man likes that job. [He] will do another job."

Another logistical issue she has to figure out is housing. Can she sign a lease on an apartment so she can live with her family instead of with her sponsors? Remaining optimistic, Do has started looking for an apartment in Philadelphia, a place she can finally call home after being shuffled around the world in temporary housing.

She has also submitted visa applications for her two brothers and sister, who were all under 18 when she first applied for her trafficking visa. Since the paperwork was just submitted, it'll take more time to find out what will happen to her siblings. She doesn't know if her parents will leave Vietnam without them.

"Hope everybody comes at the same time," says Do, 23. "Hope they can come together."

In an unusual gesture, USCIS is refunding about $500 for the cost of Do's appeals, a hefty sum for a woman in her position. In an e-mail, USCIS spokesman Shawn Saucier said, "We typically don't refund fees. In some cases, when we make an error that causes the applicant to file another application and pay another fee, that fee should be returned. But this is pretty rare."

Before they make their way to the Delaware Valley, Do's parents will be interviewed at the U.S. consulate in Hanoi. ("I sent the paperwork. I talked to my dad this morning but he didn't get it yet," Do said last week.) The FBI also has to finish various background checks, a process that includes the fingerprinting which Feldman says has already been completed. Usually, the FBI needs only one to two days but "in certain circumstances, it can take longer when it involves a different culture. Family names can be an issue," explains Saucier. "There are other agencies involved and the FBI queries other agencies. They act as sort of a gate for the rest of the checks."

With a vague understanding about the extraordinary immigration process, Do is left more uncertain about what to expect from the U.S. government. It doesn't help matters that she's among a small batch of people to have ever received a trafficking visa, let alone used this status to bring her family in from Vietnam.

In 2000, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed to provide legal status for victims willing to testify against human smugglers. As a carrot for victims to cooperate and to protect families from reprisals, parents and siblings under the age of 18 would also receive tickets to the U.S. The families are easy targets for retaliation because they're the ones left behind in the native countries.

"It's a great hardship," explains Thu Tran, who represented Do in her earlier efforts to bring her parents overseas. "The victims need the emotional and mental support of their families who face ostracism in Vietnam. They borrowed all this money for their daughter or sister to go. The families are out all this money. Most people paid $5,000. Families lost their houses and moved in with relatives."

In addition, some local Vietnamese officials see the victims' testimony for the U.S. government as a traitorous betrayal to their homeland, a humiliation and a black mark on national pride because the labor firms that fed the trafficking rings were actually run by the Vietnamese government.

Do was only 18 when she was tricked into leaving Vietnam to work in a garment factory in American Samoa. There, Do and other workers were forced to work for no pay, beaten, starved and sexually harassed while living in squalid dormitories. According to Tran, other women were reportedly forced to "lie with the boss," a euphemism for being raped by the factory owner, Kil Soo Lee. He has since been convicted of several charges including involuntary servitude, extortion and money laundering — though not rape — and awaits sentencing in Honolulu.

Each year, approximately 900,000 people are trafficked globally to work in brothels, sweatshops and other lucrative illegal ventures. About 13 percent of the first wave of some 250 victims approved for trafficking visas initially moved to the Philadelphia area. (At press time, 476 trafficking visas have been granted of 1,056 applications filed. As for visas for family members, 847 petitions have been filed but the number of those approved are not available.)

For Do, waiting for her parents is just one more obstacle in her young life. She has already been through what most people don't see in a lifetime. She still chokes up at the thought of her parents living with her in America but remains patient. The visas for her parents take her one step closer to making her dream of a family reunion a reality — and putting the nightmare of human trafficking behind her.