Since President Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam, a young Chicago attorney has been hearing from large Midwest law firms, consultants and even the Ho Chi Minh City government, all wanting her help in promoting business there.
But back home-in Chicago’s Vietnamese immigrant community-some who have bitter memories of the Communist regime that they escaped are calling 28-year-old Janie Dam Nguyen a betrayer.
To them, Nguyen committed a cardinal sin when she traveled to Vietnam last year seeking business contacts, anticipating that relations with the U.S. would be normalized. While there, she participated in a government-sponsored conference on the legal profession.
She also is considering a job offer to serve as U.S. Midwest legal and trade representative for the Foreign Trade and Development Center of Ho Chi Minh City.
“Janie was wrong to go back and work with the Communists,” said Kiet Vo, president of the 250-member Vietnamese Veterans of Illinois. A former pilot and prisoner of war, Vo, 46, represents the thinking of many in the Vietnamese-American older generation.
Nguyen “was a refugee herself. We don’t know why she did it,” said Vo, who believes Clinton betrayed the Vietnamese community when he lifted the embargo. Nguyen fled to the U.S. with her parents when Saigon fell in 1975.
The furor began late last year when word spread that Nguyen had gone to Vietnam and was going to speak at the Illinois World Trade Center about business opportunities and investments in that country.
The ensuing conflict forced her to resign as president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce and as a director of the Vietnamese Association of Illinois, a nonprofit organization that serves Vietnamese immigrants and refugees.
“There is a real split in the community,” said Ha Nguyen, executive director of the Vietnamese Association and no relation to Janie Nguyen.
“Some-many young people-think lifting the embargo will move forward the process of democracy,” he said. But “Many old-timers-they have a lot of experience with the hard-liners. They think the Communists will keep all the money and continue to deny the people.
“We accept that many people go back to visit their families and do charity work for refugees,” said Ha Nguyen. “But working with the Communist government, that we cannot accept. . . . You cannot do that and be a leader of our community.”
The Vietnamese Association received more than 30 phone calls in one day complaining about her actions, said Ha Nguyen, 51, who was in a communist re-education camp for three years before he escaped by boat with his two sons.
But Janie Nguyen said she was being unfairly tarred as a communist sympathizer. What some immigrants see as bolstering the Communist regime, she sees as helping the Vietnamese people develop the tools to push for democracy.
For example, she saw the legal conference as an opportunity to help establish a discipline that has not been practiced in Vietnam for years.
“I represent the thinking of many young Vietnamese when I say I believe that the people in power today are very different from those in power 20 years ago,” Nguyen said. “I believe that foreign investment will improve the Vietnamese people’s standard of living, and they will be better able to lead their own struggle.”
But feelings against her have run high.
“People in the community were planning to picket my house,” she said. “They were handling out leaflets denouncing me and holding meetings to try to prevent me from doing what I was doing.
“At a meeting with the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, some in the audience called out to me to remember Lam Ton,” Nguyen said. Ton’s Uptown home was firebombed five years ago after a documentary about his return visit to Vietnam aired on public television.
The day after the meeting, she wrote an open letter to the Vietnamese community: “To remove the risk of violent retaliation against my friends and fellow organization members, and so they can continue their work, I have resigned.”
Law enforcement authorities urged her to stay away from large crowds, she said, so she could not attend the Argyle Street Festival, even though she coordinated it with the Chinese American Service League.
Despite the harassment, some people, including Zung Dao, 39, the new president of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce, think Janie Nguyen was right to go to Vietnam.
“Janie was pressured to resign because they thought she was helping the communists,” he said. “But she was just doing her job to expand business opportunties for our members here.
“Vietnam is the last frontier in Asia. With or without embargo, other nations are investing heavily,” said Dao, who has owned the Edgewater Beach Cafe for 11 years.
Dao, also a veteran, is proof that the 17,000 Vietnamese here are not neatly split along generational lines.
“I support lifting the embargo,” he said. “It will help the South Vietnamese who were not fortunate enough to escape. At least it will give them a chance to live like human beings, to have business opportunities.”
Dao escaped Vietnam in 1975. His brothers and sisters were boat people, and an uncle was imprisoned for 17 years. But “Why hold the grudge?” he asked.
The hard feelings may not hold between Nguyen and her detractors, either. Recently, the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce gave her an award at its annual banquet and asked her to do consulting work with the chamber.
“A lot of people have told me privately that they support me, but they are afraid to speak out,” Nguyen said.
“Unfortunately, some in our community don’t know what democracy is. They were bullied and intimidated in Vietnam, so that’s the way they react here.”
