46 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL having collaborated with American forces during the war. Most have distinct features that make them readily identifiable. Few could name their fathers, and fewer still have ever met them. In the best of cases, birth mothers or other relatives managed to preserve a photo or two. This special IV category has given Amerasians a shot at a new life, but proving parentage has often been difficult. Particularly for applicants raised by adoptive parents, evidence was hard to come by. This problem was exacerbated by rampant fraud and attempts to exploit these applicants in the 1980s and 1990s along with a tendency by caretakers to tell orphans of uncertain parentage that they might be Amerasian—a form of hopeful storytelling, even if there was no reason to believe such claims. As the years have passed, applicants with the strongest and easiest claims to prove have already been issued visas. Only those with complicated or unclear cases remain, and for several years, visa issuances ground to a near-halt. Resourceful consular officers engaged with nongovernmental organizations to create a process utilizing commercial DNA evidence, and this allowed for a minor resurgence in the visa class and a path forward for applicants who had been trying to prove their claims of American parentage for decades. The number of Amerasian cases is dwindling, as this population ages into their 50s and 60s, remaining cases are cleared, and some of those eligible choose to remain in Vietnam. Witnesses to History Every consular officer must acknowledge that locally employed (LE) staff are the backbone of our operations; that is most assuredly true in HCMC’s consular section. But it is truly amazing to work side by side with people who have experienced the full breadth of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship over the last 50 years. Pictures of former Embassy Saigon from April 1975 are particularly poignant. Today, IV applicants enter the same compound portrayed in those old pictures, though the former embassy chancery building was torn down long ago and the current prefab-style building was erected as a stand-in until a more permanent structure could be built. They line up patiently as they await their turn at the IV windows. Today’s morning bustle of applicants is a striking contrast to the images from 50 years ago, when throngs of people scaled the same walls trying to escape Vietnam. While our applicant pool tells us much about the history of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship, we work with people who experienced that history firsthand. Several of our Vietnamese colleagues have been with us from the beginning, when the consulate building was dedicated in 1999. Some even worked for the ODP, before the U.S. established a relationship with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. While many of their colleagues have moved to the United States on SIVs, they have stayed, spending almost three decades in the service of the United States, and standing as living testaments to the human efforts of rebuilding a relationship. Several of our current local staff members who lived through the war in Saigon were among the very first people hired to staff the consulate general in Ho Chi Minh City in the late 1990s. While much of the history of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has been told through the eyes of ambassadors, historians, and politicians, the perspectives of our colleagues are fascinating and compelling. Yet our long-serving LE staff members do not dwell on the past. They choose to focus on the present and the future because they take a pragmatic approach to life: Working at the consulate is professionally enriching, and they are well respected in their communities. Some have even said that their friends respect them more because they work for the U.S. government in HCMC. Our colleagues have had plenty of opportunities to move on, but they have chosen to serve alongside generations of FSOs who are focusing on the most recent 30 years, while being mindful of the last 50. e IV work in HCMC brings a range of conflicting emotions: satisfaction that Vietnamese still carry the torch of the American Dream; sadness about Amerasians who have had a lifetime of hardships; appreciation for Vietnamese partners who have stood with us and who saw a future beyond the war; and ultimately, optimism about the human ties that bind the United States and Vietnam. n While our applicant pool tells us much about the history of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship, we work with people who experienced that history firsthand.
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