Luong Vu asks his daughter the same question each time she visits his Westminster hospital room: "When are my sons coming?"
Kimberly Vu sighs, as usual. "We are still waiting," she says to the 85-year-old family patriarch, who is fast losing his battle with prostate cancer.
But his sons aren't coming. Cuong and Vuong Vu live an ocean away in a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, and their requests for visas to the United States for a final reunion have been denied over and over again.
The U.S. Consulate says the brothers have failed to prove they will return to Vietnam after the visit. The brothers' argument that they have family, businesses and homes in Vietnam has not swayed immigration officials.
The plight is not a new one for families split between two countries, but increasingly it is becoming an issue among Vietnamese as the refugees who fled to the United States at the end of the Vietnam War grow old.
Many of those who left their homeland in the 1970s and '80s have been separated for decades from siblings, parents and children still in Vietnam. In recent years, as Vietnam's economy boomed, relatives suddenly had the financial means to travel to the U.S for reunions or final gatherings. But many families, like the Vus, find themselves entangled in a long and agonizing visa process.
Luong Vu's eight children are scattered from Orange County to Bien Hoa, Vietnam. The family was pulled apart in 1982 when Kimberly and two younger brothers fled the Communist government by boat. Nine years later, their parents followed under a government program.
But Cuong and Vuong had families in Vietnam and did not want to move to the U.S. It was a decade before the parents became U.S. citizens and were able to travel to their homeland to visit their children and grandchildren there. Luong Vu's wife died in 2005.
Now in Bien Hoa, a suburb with new factories and warehouses, Cuong, 45, and Vuong, 52, live on the same street and run their furniture businesses in front of their houses. Each is married; each has three children. "They aren't rich, but they have comfortable lives in Vietnam," Kimberly said.
When his father's health began to fail, Cuong made plans to get a non-immigrant visa. He interviewed three times with U.S. Consulate officials, his sister said, and each time he was asked only a few questions. Some seemed off point: "Do you have a car?" His visa requests were denied each time.
