Word: amerasians
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...Vietnam's long-suffering Amerasians are not just scorned-they're scammed as well. Undetected until recently, a network of brokers has for years been using Amerasians to traffic Vietnamese into the U.S. Eleven people, including Phuong, have been arrested for providing Amerasians with false identities and matching them with people willing to pay for a U.S. resident visa (those detained have pleaded not guilty and await trial). Since the Amerasian Homecoming Act was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1987, some 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives have emigrated to the U.S. How many of those...
...What's also disturbing is that the con seems to have required the complicity of consulate staffers, possibly local Vietnamese. Unlike most immigration policies, the Amerasian regulations are designed to be lenient. A visa can be granted to anyone deemed to possess "Amerasian facial features." So it's hard to understand how Tran Van Hai could have been rejected. Dark-skinned with kinky hair and built like a linebacker, Hai, 30, says he's the son of an African-American airman named Mark who lived with his mother in the 1970s. Denied a visa, he went to the consulate...
...officials won't say if an investigation of the consulate staff is under way. The consulate insists that the Amerasian visa program is tightly controlled, that American staffers are involved in interviewing and that if an officer determines an applicant is not Amerasian, two others must agree for the person to be rejected. But the problem persists and applicants report never seeing an American. As long as legitimate Amerasians are denied visas, they will be victims of fraud-or stay where they are living reminders of a painful past...
...biracial students for fomenting classroom dissent. "They act up more than others," says Juanita de la Cruz, who has five mixed-race students in her elementary school class. "I think it's because their blood is all mixed up. They feel most comfortable hanging on the streets with other Amerasian kids...
...fact, most of the Amerasian children avoid the sleazy lanes where their mothers sold themselves to their fathers. "When I see a Western man with a Filipina girl, I feel sick," says 19-year-old Paul Calumpiano, who is half-American. "But I can do nothing but throw stares at the man's back." Others, though, have no choice but to return to the bars teeming with retired American postal workers and overweight German laborers. Mixed-race boys can find work as deejays, bouncers or, if they're tall, play for a local basketball team...