U.S.A.
July 3, 2017
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 7
Hmong-American doctor inspired by heritage
SAILOR MOURNED. This undated photo released by the U.S. Navy
shows Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, age 25, from
Oakville, Connecticut. Huynh was one of the seven sailors who died in
a collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a container ship off Japan.
(U.S. Navy via AP)
Connecticut sailor among
seven killed in collision
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The sister of a U.S. Navy
sailor from Connecticut who was killed in a collision
between a destroyer and a container ship off Japan said
her family will remember him as “the most selfless
person.”
Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25, was one of seven sailors
killed aboard the USS Fitzgerald.
Lan Huynh told WVIT-TV that family members are
coping as best they can.
The family moved to Connecticut when Ngoc Huynh
was in the eighth grade, she said. Her brother graduated
from Watertown High School and also attended
Naugatuck Valley Community College before enlisting in
the Navy in 2014. The family moved to Oklahoma a short
time later.
Lan Huynh, 23, told The Hartford Courant that her
brother enlisted because he wanted to give back to his
mother, who raised four children on her own.
“It’s not something he always wanted to do, but he
wanted to do something adventurous,” she said.
She described the harrowing hours between the
collision and the identification of victims.
“We honestly, stayed up all night sitting by ourselves
and crying our hearts out. We were constantly refreshing
the web for any updates,” she said.
Lan Huynh said her brother was quiet, yet had the
“brightest smile” and was the “sweetest human being” she
knew.
“I just want everyone to know that he was the best
brother ever,” she said.
Connecticut governor Dannel P. Malloy ordered flags to
fly at half-staff in Ngoc Huynh’s honor.
q
There is such a thing as MSG withdrawal
Continued from page 6
This was after two
minutes of waiting.
When the food arrived,
there was a frantic look of
desperation and antici-
pation on his face. He
practically didn’t even need
to use chopsticks. The food
looked like it floated off the
table and sailed into his
mouth as if there was some
kind of vacuum coming
from his stomach.
With each mouthful of
dumpling or noodle, he
closed his eyes and his head
tilted back, as if gripped in
some kind of rapturous
ecstasy. His skin tone
literally darkened three
shades, from a pasty white
to a more normal human
hue. You could almost see
the MSG coursing through
his veins, bringing him
back to life from three days
of deprivation.
After we finished, we got
back into the car and
headed home — without
any leftovers, by the way.
He tilted the car seat and
reclined with his belly
engorged again and said,
“I’m so full. I’m going to
skip dinner.”
In the morning, I
brought a cup of noodles in
the car with us on the way
to the airport — just in
case.
The staff at
The Asian Reporter
wish you and your
family a safe and happy
Independence Day!
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Hmong American who
recently received his medical degree plans to return to
Madison, Wisconsin to pursue research on using stem
cells to treat chronic pain.
Yeng Her became interested in helping people regain
function after spending much of his childhood at Hmong
refugee camps in Thailand surrounded by people injured
during the Vietnam War, the Wisconsin State Journal
reported.
“I felt powerless,” he said. “That lit a fire inside of me to
go into medicine and try to bridge these gaps.”
The 33-year-old received his M.D. and Ph.D. in
biochemistry and molecular biology at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota. The M.D.-Ph.D. program takes
eight years to complete. It starts and ends with two years
of medical school and has four years of graduate school in
between.
Her and his family recently moved to Fresno, Cali-
fornia, where he’ll spend a year at a medical internship.
Then he’ll start a three-year residency in physical medi-
cine and rehabilitation at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison Health.
He is considering opening up a clinic in Laos, where his
parents grew up, and hopes to promote higher education
among Hmong Americans.
“This is the reason we’re here in the United States, that
we have this opportunity,” Her said. “Education is the
key.”
Her hopes telling his immigrant story will inspire
others.
“Opening the door for people like myself, to achieve the
American dream, that’s something we should do,” he said.
INSPIRATIONAL JOURNEY. Dr. Yeng Her, a Hmong American
who earned an M.D.-Ph.D., reflects on a life journey that has taken him
from refugee camps in Thailand as a child to a doctoral degree in medi-
cine from the Mayo Clinic, during an interview at his home in Madison,
Wisconsin. (John Hart/Wisconsin State Journal via AP)
Judge OKs lawsuit over once-secret
immigrant-vetting program
By Gene Johnson
The Associated Press
S
EATTLE — A class-action lawsuit
challenging
a
once-secret
government program that delayed
immigration and citizenship applications
by Muslims can move forward, a federal
judge has ruled.
U.S. district judge Richard Jones in
Seattle denied the Justice Department’s
request to dismiss the lawsuit, which was
filed in February by the American Civil
Liberties Union and the Northwest
Immigrant Rights Project.
The lawsuit claims the government
since 2008 has used the Controlled
Application Review and Resolution
Program to blacklist thousands of
applications for asylum, legal permanent
residency, or citizenship as national
security concerns.
The program imposes criteria on the
applications that go far beyond what
congress has authorized, including
holding up some applications if the
applicants donated to Muslim charities or
travelled to Muslim-majority countries,
the complaint alleges.
The program was not publicly
discovered
until
2012,
when
an
immigration officer discussed it during
testimony in a different lawsuit.
Immigrant rights advocates then filed
Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to
force U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) to turn over more
information about it, the lawsuit said.
“Congress has laid out the requirements
for these programs,” Matt Adams, legal
director of the Seattle-based Northwest
Immigrant Rights Project, said. “The
agency doesn’t have the authority to, one,
impose its own requirements, and, two,
impose them in a secret program on people
who aren’t even aware of them.”
In addition to challenging the program,
the lawsuit seeks to block any other
“extreme vetting” that President Donald
Trump’s administration might impose as
an updated version of it.
A spokeswoman for USCIS, Sharon
Rummery, said the agency did not have
any immediate comment on the ruling.
In its motion to dismiss the case, the
government said the program falls within
the legitimate background-check process
for immigrants applying for citizenship or
other benefits.
“It is a way for USCIS to investigate and
verify information in certain cases, and to
ensure reasoned decisions,” the Justice
Department argued.
Other lawsuits around the country have
challenged the program, Adams said, but
they were dismissed because immigration
authorities quickly ruled on the plaintiffs’
applications once the complaints were
filed, erasing the legal grounds on which
they sued.
The same thing happened in the Seattle
case, Adams said: Five of the six named
plaintiffs had their cases ruled on in the
weeks after the case was filed.
One, a Somali immigrant named
Abdiqafar Wagafe, had waited three-and-
a-half years for a decision on his citizen-
ship application. It was approved five days
after the complaint was filed, and he was
sworn in as a U.S. citizen on March 2.
But the judge said the case could go
forward on behalf of others whose
applications were being delayed because of
the program.
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