When I was 12, my cousins arrived to this country for the first time from Vietnam. They were all my age, 12 and 13, and they were sent by their parents to pave the way for the rest of their family to come. What that means is that they were given the responsibility of obtaining an education, getting a job, and then saving enough money to sponsor more family members from Vietnam or to help support family members living in extreme poverty in Vietnam. They were the hope for the future health of our family between two shores separated by a massive body of water.

They were part of the wave of “boat people” that came in the 1980s. One by one they came by boat in a perilous journey from Vietnam through the high seas, often for months facing starvation and lack of water. They passed pirate ships that sit like vultures waiting to attack boats of starving and desperate Southeast Asians on their search for a better life.

My cousin, Vinh, arrived as a teenager, just 17, along with a boatful of strangers, friends, and relatives who had spent months preparing for their journey through international waters. Leaving in secret in the dead of night along with about 40 other people, he climbed aboard a makeshift wooden craft hardly intended for travel in the open seas. He was lucky because he was rescued by a freighter and eventually made his way here to San Jose to join his parents, who awaited his arrival.

Back in Vietnam, his brother -- my cousin Anh -- and his wife also began planning for their voyage. While here though, Vinh hoped to spare his brother and his wife the perilous journey. Hoping to raise enough money to sponsor them, he began to work for a nail salon in San Jose. Vinh found that he had a very special skill...he was an artist and he applied his artistry to painting tiny miniature ornaments on the nails of salon clients.

This art form brought him a small amount of local fame, and soon many clients began to ask for him personally. His ability to earn income for his family increased, but only slowly. It was difficult to both support his family in San Jose on his small income and save enough money to sponsor his brother. The cost of sponsoring a relative to come to the United States is extremely expensive, costing upwards of tens of thousands of dollars in application fees and attorney fees.

Conditions in Vietnam worsened however. Poverty was the norm and re-education camps a terror. Anh grew impatient. Soon enough, Anh and his wife paid a small sum of money to a fisherman to take him, his wife and about 25 other people in his small fishing boat. Their intent was to reach the shores of some distant land that would accept their request for asylum. Anh and his wife tried several times to make this journey – each time using a lot of resources, but each time failing until finally one evening, the fisherman he paid was able to actually make it far enough into the high seas to escape Vietnam.

Hoping to find someone to rescue them or to reach some shoreline that would accept their request for asylum, they began their travels. Back here in the United States, I waited along with my relatives with our breaths hollow and our hearts held tightly within our chest...praying to hear from them soon...

But we never heard from them. Days passed, days became weeks, and weeks became months...until finally after seven months when we heard from one survivor of the escape attempt. She was an elderly woman who was lucky enough to have survived the escape and be rescued. She retold the story to us, with tears lodged deep in her throat about the Thai pirates that met their boat after being at sea for about one month. When they were at their weakest -- hungry, thirsty, and ill -- the pirates attacked. In the evening when only the stars dotted the skies, they came upon the fishing boat and killed all the men, my cousin included...and took his wife. No one has heard from her since. Years have passed and still sometimes I watch the stars and wonder if the stars will someday bring her back to us safely. But we know the answer...and the fate of young women stolen by pirates at sea. Stories of mass rapes and being sold into sexual slavery are common.

The lives lost along with my cousin were not just adult men and women…many were young children traveling with their parents...children as young as infants, too, as old as my young cousins who were the first to brave the shores to come here. But let me say this.... and it may be hard to hear...but Anh and his wife were the family members who were sacrificed in order to ensure our family’s survival in this country. It is a sacrifice and a risk common to many immigrants who endure extreme hardship to come to the United States, oftentimes only to meet a hostile community, anti-immigration laws, and a hostile immigration policy. It is a sacrifice far too great too pay, but it is a sacrifice that each and every member of our family must live with.

The loss rocked our family. We had spent years working together to gather enough money to sponsor as many of our family over as possible. My mother worked day and night in multiple jobs to sponsor dozens of her family members to the States. But the expense is great and it is just impossible to raise enough money to bring more than a person at a time...often times family members have to be separated from one another for years while awaiting reunification.

But we moved on. My cousin, Vinh, continued to work in the nail salon industry. He soon became so talented and popular with customers that he was able to open his own nail salon. In this nail salon, many of our own family members as well the sons and daughters of community members in Vietnam became workers. On the surface, all nail salon workers and owners have the basic desire to survive and to earn an income in the United States. However, at the most basic root, it is a common community thread to ensure the survival of the family unit that began when their family first sent their sons and daughters across the ocean to the United States...and sacrifices they made in doing so.

But there may be a hidden price to working in this industry. The nail salon industry is one of the fastest growing professions in the United States with California having over 300,000 nail salon workers, more than 80% of whom are immigrant Vietnamese women. These workers are exposed to toxic chemicals in the beauty products they use several hours a day every day of the week. A recent study by the Cancer Prevention Institute of California has linked some of these chemicals to cancer. So you see, the sacrifice extends into this country in the bodies of our children even still... Now...organizations like the ones in which I am a member -- the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative and Worksafe -- are advocating to improve the health and safety of low income immigrant workers to ensure that their issues are at the forefront of national consciousness.

But I mention this only to bring perspective to the possible diversity of stories behind immigrants in the nail salon industry as well as so many other industries that new immigrants are flocking to such as taxi and transportation companies, agriculture, warehousing, restaurant, food processing, and high tech assembly. All of these jobs carry their own often preventable health and safety issues – yet more sacrifices that immigrants make upon entering this country.

In my family, like so many other immigrant families, family strength, unity, and sacrifice are an everyday part of our culture. Imagine what happens when you introduce immigration policies that tear apart these families after so much sacrifice. Recent years have brought waves of boat people from Haiti who face repatriation under the current immigration laws. Similar experiences are shared by Latino immigrants that are facing deportation, some after decades of living in the United States. These families are being torn apart in the midst of attempting to build a stable footing in the United States.

We know all too well the side effects of our poor immigration policy: coyotes smuggling people under life-threatening conditions with immigrants experiencing sexual assault in the process, boat people raped and murdered at sea by pirates, and children left in the foster care system in the United States while parents are being deported with little opportunity for reunification. (Reunification requires participation in certain court-ordered or social worker-recommended programs that are often completely unavailable out of the country).

In my family, an extremely costly sponsorship process, limitations on immigration, and a great deal of bureaucratic red tape complicated an already difficult situation. But despite this and in spite of our sacrifice, our family continues to thrive. My family continues to build our stability in the United States, participate in enriching the Vietnamese community as well as American culture, and economically supporting the family we left behind in Vietnam. But not a day goes by when I don’t remember Anh...

As immigrants, our responsibilities are as deep as our sacrifices. Many of us, like me, commit our professional and personal lives to bettering the lives of immigrants in the United States. Part of what we need is immigration policy that takes this into effect and supports the very family unity, which has been the core of migration to the United States for so many immigrants for hundreds of years. We did not leave alone...we left together to be together...to remain together.