Ban Nguyen represents an immigrant success story, and no doubt is an example and inspiration to many in Oklahoma City now worried about their own future under new government policies that threaten the United States’ role as a sanctuary for refugees seeking new opportunity.
Nguyen, now 63, came to Oklahoma in 1975 at the age of 13, one of many who fled from Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, the collapse of the South Vietnamese government and the end of a war that had involved American ground troops for more than a decade.
His family first came to a government relocation center in Arkansas and then moved to Tulsa, where Nguyen went to high school and found work as a busboy and a waiter in several restaurants. Later he met and married Yen Le, the daughter of another Vietnamese refugee, Loc Le, who had moved to Oklahoma City and had saved to buy a small breakfast cafe called Jimmy’s Egg after its founder, Jimmy Newman…