Vietnamese American
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A Vietnamese American is a resident of the United States who is of Vietnamese descent and the majority of them are of Kinh ethnicity. They make up the bulk of overseas Vietnamese (Viet Kieu) and are also one group of Asian Americans.
According to the 2000 Census, there are 1,122,528 people who identify themselves as Vietnamese alone or 1,223,736 in combination with other ethnicities. Of those, 447,032 (39.8%) live in California and 134,961 (12.0%) in Texas. The largest concentration of Vietnamese found outside of Vietnam is found in Orange County, California, totaling 135,548. Vietnamese American businesses are ubiquitous in Little Saigon, located in Westminster and Garden Grove, where they constitute 30.7% and 21.4% of the population, respectively. States such as Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia have fast growing Vietnamese populations.
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History
The history of Vietnamese Americans is a fairly recent one. Prior to 1975, most Vietnamese residing in the United States were wives and (mixed race or Amerasian) children of American servicemen serving in Vietnam, or academics, and their number was insignificant. The Fall of Saigon (termed the "liberation of Saigon" by the Communist Government of Vietnam) on April 30, 1975, which ended the Vietnam War, prompted the first large-scale wave of immigration from Vietnam. Many people who had close ties with the Americans feared promised Communist reprisals, and 125,000 of them left Vietnam during the spring of 1975. This group was generally highly-skilled and educated, and their leaving constituted a severe 'brain drain' for Vietnam. They were airlifted by the U.S. government to bases in the Philippines and Guam, and were subsequently transferred to various refugee centers in the United States. The trajedy of forced evacuation was compounded on Friday, April 4 of 1975, when a C5A "Galaxy" cargo aircraft, which was being used to airlift out an estimated group of two hundred fifty Vietnamese orphans and forty-four "non-essential" DAO personnel during "Operation Babylift" crash-landed after an 'explosive de-compression', with great loss of life. These South Vietnamese refugees initially faced resentment by Americans following the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam War, and a poll taken in 1975 showed only 36% in favor of Vietnamese immigration. Even so, President Gerald Ford and other officials strongly supported them and passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act in 1975, which allowed them to enter the United States under a special status. In order to prevent the refugees from forming ethnic enclaves and to minimize their impact on local communities, they were scattered all over the country. Within a few years, however, many resettled in California, Texas and Virginia, giving those states the largest Vietnamese American populations.
The year 1978 began a second wave of Vietnamese refugees that lasted until the mid-1980's. As captured South Vietnamese people, especially former military officers, faced being sent to Communist "reeducation camps" (essentially forced labor concentration camps) or being forced to evacuate to "new economic zones," or being drafted into a Vietnamese occupation army sent to Cambodia, about two million people fled Vietnam in small, unsafe, and crowded boats. These "boat people" were generally less-educated and skilled than the people in the first wave. If they escaped pirates, they usually ended up in asylum camps in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong or the Philippines, where they might be allowed to enter countries that agreed to accept them. Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, reducing restrictions on entry, while the Vietnamese government established the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in response to world outcry, allowing people to leave Vietnam legally for family reunions and for humanitarian reasons. Additional American laws were passed, to allow children of American servicemen and former political prisoners and their families to enter the United States. Between 1981 and 2000, the United States accepted 531,310 Vietnamese political refugees and asylees.
Vietnamese Americans today
As a relatively recent immigrant group, most Vietnamese Americans are either first or second-generation Americans. They have the lowest distribution of people with more than one race among the major Asian American groups. As many as 1,009,627 people 5 years and older speak Vietnamese at home, making it the 7th most spoken language in the United States. As refugees, Vietnamese Americans have some of the highest rates of naturalization.
Politics
As refugees from a Communist country, many are vehemently anti-Communist. Vietnamese Americans regularly stage protests against the Vietnamese government, its human rights policy and those whom they perceive to be sympathetic to it. For example, in 1999, protests against a video store owner in Westminster who displayed the Vietnamese communist flag and a picture of Ho Chi Minh peaked when 15,000 people held a vigil in front of the store in one night, causing severe disruptions in traffic. Membership in the Democratic Party was once considered anathema among Vietnamese Americans because it was seen as less supportive of the Vietnam War, at least toward the war's end, in comparison to Nixon-era Republicans. However, their support for the Republican Party has somewhat eroded in recent years, since the Democratic Party is seen in a more favorable light by the second generation as well as the newer, poorer refugees.
Recently, Vietnamese Americans have exercised considerable political power in Orange County, Silicon Valley, and other areas. Many have won public offices at the local and statewide levels in California (mostly as Republicans). Several Vietnamese Americans serve or served in the city councils of Westminster and Garden Grove; the mayor pro tempore of Westminster is a Vietnamese American. In 2004, Van Tran and Hubert Vo were elected to the state legislatures of California and Texas, respectively. Some Vietnamese Americans have recently lobbied many city governments to make the former South Vietnamese flag instead of the current flag of Vietnam the symbol of Vietnamese in the United States, a move that the Vietnamese government objected to.
Economy
In addition, many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in Little Saigons and Chinatowns throughout North America. Indeed, Vietnamese immigrants - particularly those of pureblood ethnic Chinese origin - have been highly instrumental in intiating the development of new Little Saigon communities and the redevelopment of once declining older Chinatowns. Like many other immigrant groups, the majority of Vietnamese Americans are small business owners. Throughout the United States, many ethnic Vietnamese, especially first or second-generation immigrants, open supermarkets, restaurants (serving either Vietnamese cuisine, Chinese cuisine, or both), banh mi restaurants, beauty salons and barber shops, and auto repair businesses. Additionally, some Vietnamese Americans provide upper-tier professional services to fellow immigrants. Some of these businesses have been owned by Vietnamese Americans of Chinese ethnicity. In the Gulf Coast region )Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama) some Vietnamese Americans are involved with the fish and shrimp industries. In California's Silicon Valley, many work in the valley's computer and networking businesses and industries, although many were laid off in the aftermath of the closure of many high-technology companies.
Vietnamese Americans vary widely in income and social class levels. Many Vietnamese Americans are upper class professionals who fled from the increasing power of the Communist Party after the Vietnam War, while others work primarily in blue-collar jobs. In San Jose, California, for example, this diversity in income levels can be seen in the different Vietnamese-American neighborhoods scattered across Santa Clara County. In the Downtown San Jose area, many Vietnamese are working-class and are employed in many blue-collar positions such as restaurant cooks, repairmen, and movers, while the Evergreen and Berryessa sections of the city are affluent middle-class neighborhoods with large Vietnamese American populations, many of whom work in Silicon Valley's computer, networking, and aerospace industries.
A majority of Vietnamese Americans have done very well for themselves and their families. The first wave of immigrants in 1975-1985 have worked their way up from menial labor to have their second generation children become successful lawyers, doctors, computer engineers.
Recent immigrants who do not speak English well tend to work in menial labor jobs like assembly, restaurant/shop workers, and nail salons. A high percentage of nail salons are owned and operated by Vietnamese Americans. The work involved in nail salons takes skilled manual labor but requires only limited English speaking ability. Vietnamese Americans see that working in nail salons as a fast way to build wealth one manicure at a time.
Ethnic subgroups
A large fraction of Vietnamese Americans consisted of ethnic overseas Chinese who immigrated to Vietnam centuries ago. Ethnic Chinese made up a large fraction of the commercial elite which left after the fall of Saigon, and the Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 led to discrimination against ethnic Chinese which contributed to a large fraction of them becoming boat people. As a result, many Vietnamese Americans also speak fluent Cantonese (although with more Vietnamese influence, "Vietnamese" Cantonese slightly differs from Guangdong and Hong Kong Cantonese) and serve somewhat as a bridge between Vietnamese American and Chinese American communities, which in turn helps create an Asian American identity. Chinese Vietnamese Americans generally code-switching between Cantonese Chinese and Vietnamese when conversing with fellow ethnic Chinese immigrants from Vietnam. Some Vietnamese Americans may also speak Mandarin as a third or fourth language in all aspects of business and interaction. Interestingly, while ethnic Chinese Vietnamese Americans are seen and see themselves as overseas Chinese (or huayi) they generally do not classify themselves or are seen as Chinese American. Paradoxically, however, some Chinese Vietnamese may even consider themselves more Chinese than Vietnamese which may affect census reporting.
Some Vietnamese Americans are ethnic Eurasians and Amerasians. These Eurasians are descendants of native Vietnamese and early (white) French settlers during the colonial period in the early 1900s. Amerasians are descendants of native Vietnamese and white (sometimes black) American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Many of the latter, as well as their mothers, experienced significant social discrimination in Vietnam following the American withdrawal in 1972 (such discrimination was typically greater for children of African American servicemen). As a result, the United States government made efforts to help them, and sometimes family members, emigrate to the U.S. Some, however, continued to face discrimination in the Vietnamese American community after their arrival.
See also
- Asian American
- Cities with large Vietnamese American populations
- Little Saigon
- List of Vietnamese Americans
- Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese in diaspora)
External links
- Census Data
- Southeast Asian Archive
- Vietnamese Studies Internet Resource Center
- 30 years after the fall of Saigon: from The Orange County Register
- Asian-Nation: Vietnamese American Community
- Vietnamese American history
- Vietnamese who found new lives: from the BBC
- National Congress of Vietnamese Americansvi:Người Mỹ gốc Việt
