Sen. Kamala Harris will ask the State Department to clarify why two men in Vietnam had their travel permits denied, barring them from coming to the U.S. to donate bone marrow to their dying brother in San Jose, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Tu Le, 63, was diagnosed in January 2018 with Myelodysplastic syndrome, which disrupts the production of healthy blood cells. Le’s daughter, Trinh Colisao, said her father, a U.S. citizen, needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.
After no one on the donor list was a bone marrow match for Le, the family began asking relatives in Vietnam, where they found that Le’s brothers are 100% genetic matches.
According to Colisao, Le’s brothers in Vietnam, Lam Le and Hiep Nguyen, applied for B-2 tourist visas at the end of May, citing a medical emergency, but were denied on June 3.
She added that an immigration official from the U.S. Consulate in Vietnam called and notified the brothers that they didn’t qualify for the visas, but they weren’t given any further explanation. She said the brothers also did not receive any formal documentation as to why their applications were denied.
Le’s physician at Stanford Health Care, Laura Johnston, also submitted a letter to the U.S. Consulate in Vietnam with the brothers’ visa applications describing the urgency of the situation.
“Of the nine potential donors, only two are a perfect match,” the letter read. “Using a perfect match will improve chances for a successful transplant and reduces risk of complications.”
The family reached out to Sen. Harris and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) in hopes that they would help out, but a representative for Harris initially declined to comment.
“It’s unconscionable that Tu Le is being denied his best chance to receive the lifesaving treatment he needs,” said Lofgren. “My office is currently working with Tu and his family to help however we can.”
But now Harris is on board, too.
“That’s good news and that was the goal of reaching out,” said Colisao.
The State Department claimed it could not confirm the family’s account due to confidentiality laws.
“We cannot discuss the details of individual visa cases,” a spokesperson said. “Whenever an individual applies for a U.S. visa, a consular officer reviews the facts of the case and determines whether the applicant is eligible for that visa based on U.S. law. Consular officers refuse visa applications if an applicant is found ineligible under the Immigration and Nationality Act or other provisions of U.S. law.”
Colisao thinks her uncles living in a communist country and having no proof they’d return to Vietnam after the transplant played a role in the government’s decision to deny the visas.
“I feel like the current political climate that we’re in is not very supportive of people from those countries visiting the U.S., even for humanitarian reasons,” she said.
Colisao said Le would only have a few weeks to live without a transplant.
The brothers will attempt to apply for humanitarian parole, which, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “allows an individual, who may be inadmissible or otherwise ineligible for admission into the United States, to be paroled into the United States for a temporary period.”
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RE: Vietnamese men denied visas to save dying brother. Politicians are getting involved: Thank you for covering this urgent humanitarian issue. There aren’t any good reasons for the U.S. government to deny this humanitarian mission, and they know it or they would have articulated them in their denial. Trump’s White supremacist immigration policies are to blame. We need to change our leadership so that Americans can access family assistance regardless of country of origin.