On a recent flight from Vietnam, one of many trips I have made since the war ended, I was seated next to Dan Nguyen, a 63 year old Vietnamese who quietly spoke with me about his harrowing passage from Vietnam in 1981, along with his two younger brothers on a leaky wooden fishing boat. They eventually arrived in Guam before the dawn of a new day in sunny California. Nguyen became a proud American citizen in 1987 and successfully found career employment with Cisco.