Finding an American Dream

It was 2021 when Nguyen D. Luu received word from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that help was needed in Wisconsin. The San Jose-based immigration attorney was told that more than 13,000 Afghan refugees had landed in camps as part of the United States’ resettlement program following the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Luu arrived in November, and the circumstances were grim: children running barefoot in the snow, people with no coats or other protection from the cold. Thanks to donations from the Vietnamese-American Professional Women of Silicon Valley—and working in conjunction with the existing Catholic charity infrastructure—Luu and his colleagues were able to secure winter clothing for the families. It was grueling work, but it was exactly the type of effort that drew Luu, himself an immigrant, to law in the first place.

“It was so emotional to me, because my family was also refugees, from Vietnam. When [we] first came over, my aunts and uncles were also in a camp,” he says. “I can relate to the struggle of my clients.”

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, Luu moved at age 17 to Virginia, where various relatives worked for the federal government. Decades earlier, his family had suffered severe hardship following the Vietnam War and the 1975 fall of Saigon, when many were denied education and employment. In order to survive, they crossed the Pacific Ocean on a small, cramped boat with hundreds of other refugees. Luu’s family was lucky: They all survived. Others were not so fortunate. 

“The ocean is a big place,” Luu says. “People lost their lives to storms, piracy … they got robbed, they got thrown out of the boat. People disappeared, never heard from them again. … My friends and other family members all knew someone who went missing and never was found. Now, through clients, I hear stories and am constantly reminded of what happened.”

Hearing about his relatives’ suffering, Luu felt lucky to have made it to the United States with comparative ease years later. He’s always felt he owes a debt of gratitude to those who went before him. “It was such a traumatic experience that, for the next generation, we always heard about it,” he says. “We always imagined what our forefathers had gone through just to find freedom and the ability to live. … When I decided to go to law school, it was always my goal to help people.”

Luu earned his bachelor’s degree from George Mason University in Virginia and his J.D. from the University of Florida in 2012. He briefly worked in corporate and probate law before pivoting to an immigration practice, and he has been heavily involved in pro bono work since. In addition to his involvement with AILA, he dedicates time to immigration family law clinics held by the Vietnamese American Bar Association of Northern California. 

Many of the clients at such clinics, he says, struggle with language barriers and the length of asylum cases—which can easily take up to 10 years to resolve. “An asylum application is very tedious and long,” Luu says. “It’s still a very challenging area to get help, because who wants to be committed for five to 10 years?”

These days, Luu and his colleagues are focused on keeping track of the perpetual changes made by the Trump administration. “What we are looking at right now is doing the clinic in conjunction with a nonprofit on the Trump administration priorities,” he says. “During the first administration, it was so many changes, and it was really hard to keep up. So we hosted clinics. … I’m looking into restarting that now.”

Even as he looks to helping clients in an increasingly uncertain future, Luu remains deeply gratified by his work and the ways in which it reflects families similar to his own. 

“My clients are all over the world,” he says. “I take joy from helping people to achieve the American dream, just like how my family found an American dream.”