RNC Invests Early in California With Asian Voters .By Susan Crabtree - RCP StaffJune 29, 2021 RNC Invests Early in California With Asian Voters(AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File) WESTMINSTER, Calif. — Chi Charlie Nguyen, the vice mayor of this Orange County city, chokes up when he talks about how he immigrated to the United States four decades ago as a young teen.
“I was trying to get my life back—I had completely lost my childhood under the communist regime from 1975 to 1980,” he told RealClearPolitics.
Nguyen’s father had fought against the Viet Cong and was imprisoned afterward when the South fell to communist rule. As the oldest child of four, Nguyen stopped going to school so he could work and help his mother and their family survive.
At just 15, he managed to escape Vietnam by boat, eventually arriving in Southern California. Volunteers and churches took him in under a policy supported by three successive presidents (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan), allowing hundreds of thousands of Vietnam refugees to resettle in the United States.
After Nguyen, now 56, arrived here, he put himself through high school..........................
