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Vietnamese American
A Vietnamese American (Vietnamese: Người Mỹ gốc Việt) is an American of Vietnamese descent. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese (Người Việt Hải Ngoại) 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 communists. Forced to flee from their homeland and often thrust into poor urban neighborhoods, these newcomers have nevertheless managed to establish strong communities in a short amount of time. DemographicsAs 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 the 2006 American Community Survey, 72% of foreign-born Vietnamese are naturalized US citizens; this combined with the 36% who are born in the United States makes 82% of them United States citizen in total. Of those born outside the United States, 46.5% entered before 1990, 38.8% between 1990 and 2000, and 14.6% entered after 2000.
Spread of the Vietnamese language in the United States
Vietnamese Americans are much more likely to be Christians than Vietnamese that are residing in Vietnam. While Christians (mainly Roman Catholics) make up about 6% of Vietnam's total population, they compose as much as 23% of the total Vietnamese American population. According to the 2006 American Community Survey, the Vietnamese American population had grown to 1,599,394 and remains the second largest Southeast Asian American subgroup following the Filipino American community.
History
Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, 1975
A boat person in a refugee camp
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. Political activism
According to a study by the Manhattan Institute in 2008, Vietnamese Americans are among the most assimilated immigrant groups in the United States.[6] While their rates of cultural and economic assimilation were unexceptional compared to other groups (perhaps due to language differences between English and Vietnamese), their rates of civic assimilation were the highest among all the large immigrant groups. Vietnamese Americans, being political refugees, view their stay in the United States as permanent and became involved in the political process in higher rates than other groups. EconomicsVietnamese Americans' income and social class levels are quite diverse. Many Vietnamese Americans are 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. 
Many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in Little Saigons and Chinatowns throughout North America. Indeed, some Vietnamese immigrants, have been highly instrumental in initiating 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, bakeries specializing in bánh mì, beauty salons and barber shops, and auto repair businesses. Restaurants owned by Vietnamese Americans tend to serve ethnic Vietnamese cuisine, Vietnamized Chinese cuisine, or both, popularizing phở and chả giò in the United States.The younger generations of the Vietnamese-American population are well educated and often find themselves providing professional services. As the older generations 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 Hoa 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. Vietnam's traditionally Confucianist society values education and learning, contributing to success among Vietnamese Americans. Many have worked their way up from menial labor to have their second-generation children attend universities and become successful. Societal perception and portrayalAs 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, on the U.S. Gulf Coast, the white fishermen complained of unfair competition from their Vietnamese American counterparts resulting in hostility. In the 1980s, the Ku Klux Klan attempted to intimidate Vietnamese American shrimpers. Vietnamese American fishermen banded together to form the first Vietnamese Fishermen Association of America to represent their interests. Some low-income African Americans have made complaints 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. 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, 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. Recent studies have indicated that juvenile delinquency among Vietnamese Americans may have increased in the 21st century, as ethnic community ties have weakened. Ethnic subgroupsWhile 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. HoaA fraction of Vietnamese Americans consists of Hoa people who immigrated to Vietnam during the last few centuries. As a result, some Vietnamese Americans also speak fluent Cantonese (although with Vietnamese influence, as the dialect spoken differs slightly from Cantonese spoken by immigrants hailing from Guangdong, China and in Hong Kong). Vietnamese Americans of Hoa ethnicity generally code-switch between Cantonese and Vietnamese when conversing with Hoa immigrants from Vietnam, and are mostly able to speak to ethnic Vietnamese. Teochew, a comparatively obscure language, essentially unknown in the United States before many speakers arrived in 1980s, is also commonly spoken by another group of Hoa immigrants, but is not used in general discourse. A small number of Vietnamese Americans may also speak Mandarin as a third or fourth language, in some aspects of business and interaction. Eurasians and AmerasiansSome Vietnamese Americans are racially Eurasians—persons of European and Asian descent. These Eurasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and French settlers and soldiers and sometimes Hoa during the French colonial period (1883–1945) or during the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Amerasians are descendants of an ethnic Vietnamese parent or a Hoa 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 race", or the pejorative bụi đời, meaning "the dust of life." 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. Such discrimination was typically even greater for children of Black or Hispanic servicemen than for children of White fathers. 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. 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. 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 ChamSome ethnic Khmer and Cham refugees who were born in Vietnam can also be included in the category of Vietnamese Americans. Writing and publishingBoth 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 notable books include Quang X. Pham's acclaimed 2005 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. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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