(Redirected from Vietnamese-Americans)
A 'Vietnamese American' (
Vietnamese: ''người Mỹ gốc Việt'') is a resident of the
United States who is of
Vietnamese descent. They make up the bulk of
overseas Vietnamese (''Việt Kiều'') and are the fourth-largest
Asian American group.
Mass Vietnamese immigration to the United States started after
1975, after the end of the
Vietnam War. Early immigrants were refugee
boat people fleeing persecution by the victorious communists. Forced to flee from their homeland and often thrusted into poor urban neighborhoods, these newcomers have nevertheless managed to establish strong communities in a short amount of time.
Demographics
'Growth of Vietnamese Americans (alone)'| Year | Number |
|---|
| 1970 | 'N/A' |
| 1980 | '245,025' |
| 1990 | '614,547' |
| 2000 | '1,122,528' |
| 2005 (est) | '1,418,334' |
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 one million people who are five years and older speak
Vietnamese at home—making it the seventh-most spoken
language in the United States. As refugees, Vietnamese Americans have some of the highest rates of naturalization. In 2000, 44% of foreign-born Vietnamese are American citizens, the highest rate among all Asian groups
[2]. In the 2005
American Community Survey, 71% of foreign-born Vietnamese are naturalized US citizens; this combined with the 36% who are born in the United States makes 81% of them United States citizen in total
.
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, ranking fourth among the Asian American groups. Of those, 447,032 (39.8%) live in
California and 134,961 (12.0%) in
Texas. The largest number of Vietnamese found outside of
Vietnam is found in
Orange County, California—totalling 135,548. Vietnamese American businesses are ubiquitous in
Little Saigon, located in
Westminster and
Garden Grove, where they constitute 30.7 and 21.4 percent of the population, respectively. States such as
Louisiana,
Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts,
Illinois,
Minnesota,
Washington,
Florida, and
Virginia have fast growing Vietnamese populations. The
San Francisco Bay Area and the
Houston metropolitan areas have sizable Vietnamese communities. Recently, the Vietnamese immigration pattern has shifted to other states like
Oklahoma (
Oklahoma City in particular) and
Oregon (
Portland in particular).
Vietnamese Americans are much more likely than Vietnamese still residing in Vietnam to be
Christians. While Christians (mainly
Roman Catholics) make up about six percent of Vietnam's total population, they compose as much as 28 percent of the total Vietnamese American population
[3].
As with native-born descendants of other minority immigrant groups, the younger generations of American- raised and educated Vietnamese Americans are increasingly speaking English rather than the mother tongue of Vietnamese. Additionally, the younger generations have become much more acculturated to the Western culture than their traditional Vietnamese culture. The
Confucianist paternal hierarchy found in some Asian cultures has gradually broken down as Vietnamese American females increasingly attend college and/or take on careers as entrepreneurs, wage earners, or salaried professionals.
According to the 2005
American Community Survey, the Vietnamese American population had grown to 1,521,353 and remains the second largest
Southeast Asian American subgroup following the
Filipino American community
.
History
South Vietnamese civilians scramble to board a US helicopter during the American evacuation of Saigon.
The history of Vietnamese Americans is a fairly recent one. Prior to
1975, most Vietnamese residing in the United States were wives and children of American servicemen in Vietnam or academia, and their number was insignificant. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization services, only 650 Vietnamese arrived from 1950 to 1974. The
Fall of Saigon 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 or with the then Republic of Vietnam government feared promised communist reprisals. So, 125,000 of them left Vietnam during the spring of 1975. This group was generally highly-skilled and educated. 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.
South Vietnamese refugees initially faced resentment by Americans following the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam War. A poll taken in 1975 showed only 36 percent of Americans were in favor of Vietnamese immigration. President
Gerald Ford and other officials strongly supported Vietnamese immigration to the U.S. and passed the
Indochina Migration and Refugee Act in 1975, which allowed Vietnamese refugees 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 and
Texas.
The year 1978 began a second wave of Vietnamese refugees that lasted until the mid-1980s. As South Vietnamese people—especially former military officers and government employees were sent to Communist "
reeducation camps"—about two million people fled Vietnam in small, unsafe, and crowded boats. These "
boat people" were generally lower on the socioeconomic ladder than the people in the first wave. Vietnamese escaping by boat 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 allowing children of American servicemen and former political prisoners and their families to enter the United States. Another peak of Vietnamese immigrants to the US was in 1992, when many individuals in Vietnam's
reeducation camps were released or sponsored by their families to come to the United States. Between 1981 and 2000, the
United States accepted 531,310 Vietnamese political refugees and asylees.
Politics
As refugees from a Communist country, many Vietnamese Americans are strongly opposed to communism. 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, California, 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, as the Democratic Party has become seen in a more favorable light by the second generation as well as by newer, poorer refugees. However, the Republican Party still has overwhelming support; in Orange County, Vietnamese Americans registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats at 55% and 22%, respectively
[4]. Exit polls during the
2004 presidential election show that 72% of Vietnamese American voters in the 8 eastern states polled voted for Republican incumbent
George W. Bush compared to only 28% who voted for the Democratic challenger
John Kerry[5]. The Republican Party's
Anti-Communism views tend to be more favorable to older Vietnamese Americans.
Vietnam War memorial commemorating American and South Vietnamese soldiers in Westminster, California
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 and
Texas. One Vietnamese American,
Janet Nguyen, serves on the Orange County
Board of Supervisors, one is serving as mayor of
Rosemead, California and several serve or have served in the city councils of Westminster, Garden Grove, San Jose,
[6] and places as varied as
Clarkston, Georgia. In 2004,
Van Tran and
Hubert Vo were elected to the state legislatures of California and Texas, respectively.
Viet Dinh was the
Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003 who was the chief architect of the
USA PATRIOT Act. From February 2007,
Mina Nguyen has been appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Business Affairs and Public Liaison at the Treasury Department
[7]. In March 2007,
John Tran was sworn as mayor of Rosemead, a city in California and became the first Vietnamese American to be elected as major of any city in the United States. In 2006, as many as 15 Vietnamese Americans were running for elective office in California alone,
[8] a sign of the growing maturity of the community. For federal elective office, at least two candidates have run for a seat in the
United States House of Representatives as their party's official candidate.
[9] In 2006,
Hong Tran made what may be the most ambitious campaign yet for a Vietnamese American, running for election to the
United States Senate from the state of
Washington (she came in a distant second in the Democratic Party primary).
[10] Some Vietnamese Americans have recently lobbied many city and state 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 which raised objections from the Vietnamese government. Their efforts resulted in the California and Ohio state governments enacting legislations to adopt that flag in August 2006. From February 2003 to January 2006, in the USA, 9 States, 3 Counties and 76 Cities have adopted Resolutions recognizing the yellow flag as the Vietnamese Heritage and Freedom Flag
[11].
Economics
Phuoc Loc Tho, the first Vietnamese-American shopping center in Little Saigon, California
Vietnamese Americans income and social class levels is quite diverse. Many Vietnamese Americans are upper–
middle 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 middle- to upper–middle class neighborhoods with large Vietnamese American populations—many of whom work in
Silicon Valley's computer, networking, and aerospace industries. In
Little Saigon of
Orange County, there are significant socioeconomic disparities between the established and successful Vietnamese Americans who arrived in the first wave and the later arrivals of low-income refugees.
Vietnamese Americans have come to America primary as refugees, with little or no money. While (on a collective basis) not as academically or financially accomplished as their
East Asian counterparts, (who generally have been in the US longer, and did not come as war or political refugees but for economic reasons), census shows that Vietnamese Americans are an upwardly mobile group. Although clear challenges remain for the community, their economic status improved dramatically between 1989 and 1999. In 1989, 34 percent of Vietnamese Americans lived under the poverty line, but this number was reduced to 16 percent in 1999, compared with just over 12 percent of the U.S. population overall.
Many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in
Little Saigons and
Chinatowns throughout
North America. Indeed, some Vietnamese immigrants, have been highly instrumental in intiating the development and redevelopment of once declining older Chinatowns, as they tend to find themselves attracted to such areas. Like many other immigrant groups, the majority of Vietnamese Americans are
small business owners. Throughout the United States, many Vietnamese—especially first or second-generation immigrants—open supermarkets, restaurants (serving either ethnic
Vietnamese cuisine, Vietnamized
Chinese cuisine, or both; hence,
phở and
chả giò has since become popular Vietnamese food in the United States),
bánh mì restaurants,
beauty salons and barber shops, and auto repair businesses.
The younger generations of the Vietnamese-American population are well educated and often find themselves providing professional services. As the older generation tend to find difficulty in interacting with the non-Vietnamese professional class, there are many Vietnamese-Americans that provide specialized professional services to fellow Vietnamese immigrants. Of these, a small number are owned by Vietnamese Americans of Chinese ethnicity. In the
Gulf Coast region—such as
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.
Many Vietnamese parents pressure their children to excel in school and to enter professional fields such as science, medicine, or engineering because the parents feel insecurity stemming from their chaotic past and view education as the only ticket to a better life. Another factor contributing to the fact that some Vietnamese do well in sciences, is that Vietnam is a
Confucianist society, which values education and learning. Many have worked their way up from menial labor to have their second-generation children attend universities and become successful.
Recent immigrants who do not speak English well tend to work in menial labor jobs like assembly, restaurant/shop workers,
nail and
hair salons. A high percentage (about 37 percent nationwide and 80 percent in California according to ''Nguoi Viet Daily'' newspaper) 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. Some Vietnamese Americans see working in nail salons as a fast way to build wealth one manicure at a time. This concept and economic niche has proven so successful that visiting overseas Vietnamese entrepreneurs from Britain have also adopted the Vietnamese American model and opened several nail salons in the United Kingdom as well, where few previously existed.
In the waters of the
Gulf of Mexico, Vietnamese Americans have accounted for between 45-85% of the shrimping business in the region. The
dumping of imported shrimp (ironically from Vietnam), however, have affected their source of livelihood.
[3]
Societal perception and portrayal
As with other ethnic minority groups in United States, Vietnamese Americans have come into conflict with the larger U.S. population, particularly in how they are perceived and portrayed. There have been degrees of hostility directed toward Vietnamese Americans. For example, in the
U.S. Gulf Coast, the white fishermen complained of unfair competition from their Vietnamese American counterparts resulting in hostility. In 1980s, the
Ku Klux Klan attempted to intimidate Vietnamese American shrimpers.
[4] Vietnamese American fishermen are banded together to form the first Vietnamese Fishermen Association of America to represent their interests.
Some low-income African Americans have have made visible their discontent of the fact that Vietnamese refugees receive more government assistance than they ever have.
Gang activities have become a concern among the Vietnamese American population and law enforcement. For example, in 1992 in
Sacramento, a major robbery and shoot-out occurred at an electronic retailer between Vietnamese American gangs and the local police— the media sensationalized this incident. Another example is when Vietnamese American gangs commit violent home invasion robberies toward wealthy Vietnamese American families. Some cafes in Little Saigon of
Orange County have been rumored to be fronts for gang activity.
While gangs have become part of the reality and societal perception of Vietnamese Americans, a contrary perception of young Vietnamese Americans as high achievers has also become common. This has resulted in a valedictorian or delinquency myth.
Some studies
[5], show that there is a real world basis to the "valedictorian-delinquent" perception of Vietnamese American youth. Based on field work in a Vietnamese American community, social scientists argue that Vietnamese American communities often have dense, well-organized sets of social ties that provide encouragement to and social control of children. At the same time, these communities are often located in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods at the margins of American society. Vietnamese children who maintain close connections to their own communities are often driven to succeed, while those who are outsiders to their own society often assimilate into some of the most alienated youth cultures of American society and fall into delinquency.
[6]
Ethnic subgroups
While the census data only count those who report themselves to be
ethnically Vietnamese, the way some other ethnic groups from Vietnam view themselves may affect census reporting.
Vietnam-born Chinese
A fraction of Vietnamese Americans consists of ethnic
overseas Chinese who immigrated to Vietnam centuries ago. As a result, some Vietnamese Americans also speak fluent
Cantonese (although with Vietnamese influence, "Vietnamese" Cantonese differs slightly from Cantonese spoken by immigrants hailing from
Guangdong,
China and in
Hong Kong) and serves somewhat as a bridge between the Vietnamese American and
Chinese American communities, which in turn helps create the
Asian American identity. Chinese Vietnamese Americans generally
code-switch between Cantonese and Vietnamese when conversing with fellow ethnic Chinese immigrants from Vietnam.
Teochew Chinese, a comparatively obscure Chinese dialect somewhat unheard of in the United States before its arrival in the 1980s, is also commonly spoken by another group of Vietnamese-born ethnic Chinese immigrants, but is not used in general discourse. Some Vietnamese Americans may also speak
Mandarin as a third or fourth language, in all aspects of business and interaction.
However, due to the possession of Vietnamese-style names - such as
Tran (a very common surname among Vietnamese-born Chinese immigrants as
Nguyen is to the ethnic Vietnamese), Ly, Pham, Phung, Luu and so on - and the Vietnamese language, ethnic Chinese Vietnamese are often referred to as "Vietnamese" and can be mistaken for ethnic Vietnamese by Chinese from
Hong Kong and
Taiwan. Interestingly, while ethnic Chinese Vietnamese Americans are seen and also see themselves as overseas Chinese (or ''huayi'') they generally do not classify themselves as Chinese American, nor are they seen as such. Paradoxically, however, some Chinese Vietnamese may consider themselves more Chinese than Vietnamese which may affect census reporting. The latter is particularly evidenced as some Vietnamese-born Chinese migrants in the United States have reaffirmed their Chinese identity by taking the initiative to changing the Vietnamese spellings of their surnames back to Chinese equivalents.
The population distribution of transplanted Vietnamese Chinese in the United States varies. For instance, many Vietnamese Chinese immigrants tend to reside in communities closer to the ethnic Vietnamese (such as in "Little Saigon" in Orange County, California or San Jose), while others have chosen to intermingle and concentrate with other Chinese diasporas (namely with emigres from Mainland China and Hong Kong) as in
San Francisco,
Monterey Park, California or
New York City, due to comparatively great prospects of opportunities with the latter. This is mostly dependent on the duration of residence and level of assimilation and interaction of particular Vietnamese-born Chinese with the ethnic Vietnamese in the old country.
The Vietnamese-Chinese immigrants at times are involved in Chinese gang activity. Often Chinese gangs use the Vietnamese-Chinese population as enforcers. Though working for the Chinese gangs they often identify themselves as Vietnamese, as it would be easier for them to extort the Vietnamese population. With their knowledge in Cantonese and other languages coming from the Chinese backgrounds, they often are highly useful in interactions between the Vietnamese and Chinese. In the early years often most Vietnamese American gang activity were carried out by the Vietnamese-Chinese subgroup as they are often more prone to being scouted by the already existing Chinese gangs of America. Even today the Chinese from Vietnam have a strong presence in the underground.
Eurasians and Amerasians
Some Vietnamese Americans are racially
Eurasians—persons of European and Asian descent. These Eurasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and
French settlers and soldiers during the French colonial period (1883-1945) or during the Franco-Vietnamese War (
First Indochina War)
(1946-1954).
Amerasians are descendants of an ethnic Vietnamese parent and an American parent, most frequently of White, Black or Hispanic background. The first substantial generation of Amerasian Vietnamese Americans were born to American personnel (primarily military men) during the
Vietnam War (1961-1975). Many such children were disclaimed by their American parent and, in Vietnam, these fatherless children of foreign men were called ''con lai'', meaning "mixed child", or the pejorative ''bụi đời'', meaning "the dust of life."
[7] Many of these initial generation of Amerasians, as well as their mothers, experienced significant social and institutional discrimination both in Vietnam--where they were subject to denial of basic civil rights like an education, the discrimination worsening following the American withdrawal in 1973--as well as by the United States government, which officially discouraged American military personnel from marrying Vietnamese nationals, and frequently refused claims to US citizenship lodged by Amerasians born in Vietnam whose mothers were not married to their American fathers.
[12][13][14] Such discrimination was typically even greater for children of Black or Hispanic servicemen than for children of White fathers.
[15]
Subsequent generations of Amerasians (particularly children born in the United States), as well those Vietnamese-born Amerasians whose American paternity was documented by their parents' marriage prior to birth or by subsequent legitimization, have generally faced a much different, arguably more favorable, outlook.
[16]
The
American Homecoming Act, passed in 1988, helped over 25,000 Amerasians remaining in Southeast Asia to emigrate to the United States. Nonetheless, although granted permanent resident status, many have yet been unable to obtain citizenship; and many have expressed feeling a lack of belonging or acceptance in the U.S., because of differences in culture, language, and citizenship status.
[17]
The Amerasian Naturalization Act of 2005 would have granted automatic citizenship to many of these Amerasians, but the bill died in committee without being passed.
Ethnic Khmer and Cham
Some ethnic
Khmer and
Cham refugees who were born in Vietnam can also be included in the category of Vietnamese Americans.
Writing and publishing
Both Vietnamese writers in Vietnam and Vietnamese-American writers have a unique set of challenges they encounter when trying to step out of the shadows of writing and publishing. In Vietnam, few literary writers are endorsed by the state and respected by their literary peers; for artists of all types, particularly literature, Vietnam has a climate of repression and harassment. Writers must find ways to get around these barriers and sometimes when they do, they are severely reprimanded or - more infrequently - jailed for their writing. In the United States, a new generation, often referred to as the "
1.5 generation" (those born in Vietnam, but who came to the United States at an early age), of Vietnamese-American writers are figuring out how to portray themselves outside of the experiences of the Vietnam War and "fall of Saigon". Many Vietnamese-American writers are for the first time, stepping away from the topic of war and displacement, to the far more urgent subject of identity, or what it means to have a divided cultural identity.
The Vietnamese-American writing and publishing scene has been steadily growing since the mid/late-1990s and shows no signs of slowing down. In 1997,
Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge - considered the first novel written by a Vietnamese-American about the immigrant experience - was published by Viking Press and received rave views for lyrical writing from major newspapers, such as the NY Times, the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune and others. In the semi-autobiographical novel, a young girl and her mother leave Vietnam after the war, bound for America, and once settled in, have to deal with issues that typify the immigrant experience. Many similarly themed novels and memoirs have followed as the 1.5 generation has come of age and begun to articulate their identity as both Vietnamese and American, a (sometimes successful) fusion of Eastern traditions in a Western society, and the confusion that resulted from growing up Vietnamese in American culture.
In the United States, Vietnamese-American writers have the freedom to explore both negative and positive aspects of their cultural and societal experiences. Only recently, though, has the 1.5 generation, who has the advantage of being raised with the English language, really starting to develop a literary scene and any type of movement. The first generation Vietnamese-Americans had the disadvantages of not knowing English and needing to find work to support themselves and/or their families. Not only do Vietnamese-Americans have the freedom to explore these issues, but people in American society are increasingly interested in those issues as well, as evidenced by the success of Monique Truong’s novel Book of Salt.
Other recent notables books include
Quang X. Pham's acclaimed father-son memoir "A Sense of Duty,"
Andrew Lam's PEN Award-winning "Perfume Dreams", Andrew Pham's Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize winner "Catfish and Mandala", and
Aimee Phan's debut collection of short stories "We Should Never Meet."
If the literary scene in the United States has been a bit fragmented, there seems to be signs of it unifying and strengthening as more novels, short stories, and poetry are published every year. And Vietnamese-Americans are being recognized, apart from ethnicity, for solid literary writing that depicts the outsider experience, allowing people of all ages, ethnicities, and other cultural divides, to connect with one another and with the written word.
References
1. 2005 American Community Survey: Selected Population Profile in the United States
2. From Refugees to Americans: Thirty Years of Vietnamese Immigration to the United States Alicia J. Campi
3. Bankston, Carl L. III. 2000. "Vietnamese American Catholicism: Transplanted and Flourishing." U.S. Catholic Historian 18 (1): 36-53
4. OC Blog: Post-Election Spinning
5. Asian-Americans step up to ballot box
6. San Jose Councilwoman
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