Orange County Register, California
April 25 2005

Tran objects to welcome for communists
Garden Grove assemblyman fled Saigon 30 years ago.

By JOHN GITTELSOHN
The Orange County Register

The Legislature honored visitors from Armenia and Hungary on
Thursday, but Assemblyman Van Tran, R-Garden Grove, was outraged when
a delegation from Vietnam received a courtesy introduction on the
floor of the Assembly.

“I find it personally offensive,” said Tran, who fled Saigon 30 years
ago this month when South Vietnam fell to the communist North. “I
find it offensive that the majority (Democrats) would honor the same
folks who chased out me and my family and who stand for nothing we
do.”

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez posed for photos with the guests, but
under floor rules barred Tran from voicing his outrage until after
the Vietnamese left.

“Today you honored – you personally applauded – a representative of a
regime that enslaved and murdered countless thousands of my former
countrymen,” Tran, the first Vietnamese-American elected to
California’s Legislature, wrote to the speaker.

Tran called for a review of Assembly rules that allow recognition
ofvisitors from communist states or totalitarian dictatorships. As a
member of the Garden Grove City Council last year, he sponsored an
ordinance that required visitors from the Vietnamese government to
give two weeks notice before coming to town.