Vietnamese-Americans see themselves in Afghan refugees, offer help

Images of Afghans vying for flights out of Kabul evoked memories for many Vietnamese-Americans of their own attempts to escape a falling Saigon

Some have offered to sponsor recent refugees from Afghanistan, while others have focused on fundraising for refugee resettlement groups

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Vietnamese-American Thuy Do, second from left, and her husband Jesse Robbins, centre, talk with Abdul and his family in Seattle. Photo: AP

Published: 1:32pm, 21 Sep 2021

In the faces of Afghans desperate to leave their country after US forces withdrew, Thuy Do sees her own family, decades earlier and thousands of miles away.

A 39-year-old doctor in Seattle, Washington, Do remembers hearing from her parents how they sought to leave Saigon after Vietnam fell to communist rule in 1975 and the American military airlifted out allies in the final hours. It took years for her family to finally get out of the country, after several failed attempts, and make their way to the United States, carrying two sets of clothes a piece and a combined US$300. When they finally arrived, she was 9 years old.

These stories and early memories drove Do and her husband Jesse Robbins to reach out and help Afghans fleeing their country now. The couple has a vacant rental home and decided to offer it up to refugee resettlement groups, which furnished it for newly arriving Afghans in need of a place to stay.

Thuy Do and her husband Jesse Robbins, right, pose with an Afghan family in Seattle. Photo: AP

“We were them 40 years ago,” Do said. “With the fall of Saigon in 1975, this was us.”

Television images of Afghans vying for spots on US military flights out of Kabul evoked memories for many Vietnamese-Americans of their own attempts to escape a falling Saigon more than four decades ago. The crisis in Afghanistan has reopened painful wounds for many of the country’s 2 million Vietnamese-Americans and driven some elders to open up about their harrowing departures to younger generations for the first time.