A refugee’s gift
In offering another refugee his citizenship, Chuong Nguyen is not submitting a transactional sort of sacrifice. He is giving a gift of selfless love.
Refugees who journey from deprivation and vulnerability to eventual security carry the imprint of their experience for life. Chuong Nguyen is one of those refugees. Loaded with his siblings into an overcrowded boat the day before Saigon fell in 1975, Nguyen was one of the luckier boat people to escape Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of others died at sea. He made it to Subic Bay in the Philippines under what he calls the “warm welcome” of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Eventually he arrived in the United States, where he became a Catholic priest.
Nguyen made news last month when he wrote Donald Trump on the day the president signed his executive order banning entrance to the United States for Syrian and other refugees. “My heart and my soul were frozen,” he writes. “I am a refugee. . . . Becoming a refugee is a choice one makes when there are no other options.” Nguyen, who has spent his life shaping young people and strengthening communities, considers his story to be one of many that has helped make America great.
In his letter, Nguyen offered to relinquish his U.S. citizenship so that the president could offer it to a Syrian refugee. While the president has no power to bestow citizenship, the priest’s offer received praise from many quarters for its sacrificial character. But there’s something deeper happening.
