Meet Lan Nguyen
my story
I came to Garden Grove in 1980 as a refugee leaving Vietnam by boat among the waves of Vietnamese boat people escaping the communists after the Fall of Saigon in 1975.
I was enrolled into Bolsa Grande High School and graduated with a high school diploma in 1983.
I Went to the University of California at Riverside to study Political Sciences with an emphasis in Eastern Bloc Politics and U.S. International Relations. Graduated from UCR in 1987 with a Bachelor’s Degree.
After, I went straight to law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and graduated with a Juris Doctorate Degree in 1990. I have been a lawyer since then.
Upon return to Southern California as a licensed lawyer, I immediately volunteered to work on many projects benefiting the community and many of those works continue until today:
- Advocated for refugee rights with the Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers (LAVAS) to help stateless refugees remaining in various refugee camps in Southeast Asia.
- Started various radio or television talk shows and wrote newspaper articles to explain legal issues to the community,
- Helped the community to understand about the electoral process, registering people to vote and actually participating in the voting process,
- Advocated for human rights in Vietnam and leveraged the political process in the U.S. and the Vietnamese communities throughout the U.S. to influence U.S. relations with Vietnam in human rights advocacy, diplomatic relations, international trading, economic assistance, etc.
- Participated in or assisted in almost every election or political campaign affecting the Vietnamese American community in the last 25 years
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