Former refugee aims to sponsor family of 14 Syrians

Trieu Nguyen (top left) is with his parents, Dong Nguyen (left) and Viet Truong (right), and a younger brother at a refugee camp on Kuku Island in Indonesia. The Hamilton, Ont. man now aims to sponsor a family of 14 Syrian refugees to move to Canada.

An Ontario man whose family arrived in Canada as refugees 34 years ago hopes to “pay it forward” by sponsoring 14 Syrian refugees, at an estimated cost of $64,000.

“I wanted to honour, not just my parents’ efforts and sacrifices, but the generosity of Canadians back then,” Trieu Nguyen, an engineer from Hamilton, Ont., told CTV News Channel Wednesday, explaining why is sponsoring the Al Rahmo family, with 12 children aged one to 20.

Nguyen’s family were among 60,000 Vietnamese refugees, or “boat people,” who were accepted to Canada as refugees between 1975 and 1980.

The Nguyens fled their home in Saigon after Nguyen’s father, a government employee, was singled out as an “American sympathizer” by the ruling communists, and forced to work in a labour camp, Nguyen said.

Even after he left the camp, Nguyen’s father remained under suspicion, Nguyen said.

“His opportunities and his future, as well as his family’s and his kids’ futures, were fairly dark,” he said.

So in 1981, the Nguyens gathered up their lives and, like scores of others, boarded boats headed to the South China Sea. Nguyen was just three years old.

“We were there for four days before a merchant ship picked us up and took us to the Kuku refugee camp in Indonesia,” he said.

The Ryerson United Church in Hamilton sponsored the family of five to resettle in Canada, and Nguyen’s parents, Dong Nguyen and Viet Truong, worked several jobs to make ends meet.

“We benefitted from incredible support from our sponsoring group,” Nguyen said. “They opened their hearts and their doors to us.”

Now Nguyen and his wife, Brooke Biggs, are hoping to match that generosity. They’ve started an online fundraiser to help meet their goal of $64,000, which they estimate is enough to support the 14-person family for a year. They’ve already raised more than $14,000.

“You can imagine finding accommodations for a family of 14 is not easy. We’re working hard,” Nguyen said.

Nguyen says he hopes his story adds “a little perspective” to the Syrian migrant conversation.

“When [the Syrian refugees] get here, they’re going to require substantial support from the government and from the private sector … but just as my parents did, they’re going to work incredibly hard to try and provide for their families,” he said.

“Thirty years from now, looking back on our response to Syria and this migrant crisis, I would like to say, much like the boat people after the Vietnam War ended, that we would be proud of our response.”

With files from CTV News Channel