High Court Considers Immigration Case
Jan. 9 -- Tuan Ahn Nguyen was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1969, the son of a Vietnamese mother who abandoned him at birth. He was raised by his father, Joseph Boulais, an American living and working in Vietnam during the war.
Today, lawyers for Nguyen and Boulais appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging a federal statute that imposes different standards on fathers than on mothers for conferring citizenship on foreign-born and out-of-wedlock children. Under the law, mothers of out-of-wedlock children do not have to formally prove their parenthood — fathers do.
The father and son’s saga began in April 1975, when Saigon fell to North Vietnamese communist forces and the city dissolved in chaos. At the time, Boulais and his new Vietnamese wife, Mai, were away on a business trip.
Nguyen fled the country and was brought to the United States as a refugee, becoming a legal permanent resident under federal law. He was reunited with Boulais and his wife, who raised him in Texas.
Twenty-five years later, Nguyen and his father find themselves at the center of a debate about immigration and gender-classification under the law.
Convictions Start Deportation Proceedings
Problems with Nguyen’s immigration status arose in August 1992, after he pleaded guilty in Texas state court to two felony charges of sexual assault on a child, according to court documents. He was sentenced to two 8-year prison terms.
While incarcerated in Huntsville, Texas, Nguyen was interviewed by an Immigration and Naturalization Service agent. Based on what Nguyen told the agent about his personal history, the INS began deportation proceedings against him in April 1995.
The agency claimed Nguyen was subject to the proceedings because he was an alien who was also a convicted felon. An immigration judge agreed and ordered him deported.
Nguyen and his father appealed the order to the Board of Immigration Appeals. With the appeal pending, Boulais began a paternity proceeding in a Texas district court to prove Nguyen was his son.
