Under Trump Administration, Some Vietnamese Immigrants Face Uncertain Fate
Vietnamese immigrants attended a public forum at VietAid in Dorchester to learn more about changes to immigration policies under President Donald Trump. (Shannon Dooling/WBUR)
It’s a Saturday afternoon at a community center in Dorchester. More than a dozen people sit in metal folding chairs, organized in a circle and leaning forward, listening to the free legal advice being offered.
Some people are at the workshop alone; others have young children with them. They’re all part of Dorchester’s large Vietnamese community. And, like Van Nguyen, they’re all here because they’re worried.
“I mean it’s kind of, like, hitting home because my husband does not have citizenship and he’s got a past so we’re just kind of very nervous too,” Nguyen says.
There’s increasing anxiety among Vietnamese immigrants across the country.
For more than a year now, the Trump administration has been quietly renegotiating an agreement between the United States and Vietnam. The agreement has allowed some Vietnamese immigrants to live here for more than 20 years.
Nguyen says she fled Vietnam and came to the U.S. as a refugee in 1980. She’s lived in Dorchester since 1996.
Nguyen doesn’t go into too much detail about her husband’s past, but she says she thought her husband, who has a green card in the U.S., was safe from removal back to Vietnam. That is, until she came to this forum hosted by immigration advocates.