Vietnam
Refugees –
A Background Story
The fall of South Vietnam in April 1975
triggered one of the greatest evacuations in modern times. Several million
people (the exact figure will never be known) fled the country over the next fifteen
years, spreading some 1.6 million Vietnamese refugees and immigrants throughout
the world.
The North Vietnamese defeat of the country
created an immediate panic at the end of the war, causing tens of thousands to
flee by land and sea to neighboring countries. In some cases, the United States
government was able to assist in the evacuation of some Vietnamese nationals
with their own civilian, diplomatic, and remaining military personnel. Still
these people represented only a small fraction of those wanting to leave their
doomed country.
The reunion of Vietnam , under the
communist regime, did not bring lasting peace and the region and new nation
remained highly unstable. Vietnamese military incursions into neighboring
countries such as Laos and Kampea, and a brief war with China , left an already
shattered economy in ruins. Vietnam was never a wealthy country and it became
one of the poorest countries because of the following reasons:
- Terror and imprisonment of former foes of the
communist government,
- Collectivization of land,
- Efforts to build a communist model economy
coupled with a U.S. trade embargo imposed after the war.
During the late 1970s hundreds and thousands of people began to
desert the country under pressure which had reached a breaking point. The
groups of people who entered other countries around the South China Sea in old,
beaten-up boats were called “the Boat People.”
The evacuations by sea resulted into countless deaths because
these people had no previous knowledge of the sea or navigation. The Boat
People had more trouble once they reached a destination because the host
countries were not willing to take them in as new citizens. Countries did
not have the means or willingness to take in and take care of all of these refugees
because their economies were also poor.
As a result, most Boat People were herded
into hurriedly prepared refugee camps. They had to wait in these refugee camps
for years until a new country accepted them. These camps were no better than
prisons. By the early 1990s the continued existence of these refugee camps
began to try the world’s patience because they had already began to
accept the fact that the original conditions that led the boat people to flee
Vietnam , were no longer as bad. The Boat People were worse off in the
camps than they would be back in Vietnam .
During the 1980s the United Nations
refugee agency assisted some 76,000 Vietnamese refugees to voluntarily return
to Vietnam and had established monitoring agencies to ensure that they would be
treated fairly. But even in the spring of 1995, 37,000 people still remained in
camps in Hong Kong and Malaysia .
This led to some acts of force by the host
people such as burning down of refugee camp homes and facilities to make it as
physically uncomfortable as possible for the refugees to continue to exist
under these conditions. Finally, the countries with the remaining refugees,
simply forced them aboard planes, and dropped them off back in Vietnam .
A Comparative Study of Vietnamese
Diaspora In U.S. , Canada and Australia .
Vietnamese population in United States ,
especially the second generation, is the largest population of refugee children
in American history. This huge population, which amounts to 1,122,528 in total,
has called the United States of America its home since 1975. And it is very
interesting to see how they have assimilated in three different countries like
the United States of America , Australia and Canada . This is a comparative
demographic study of Vietnamese Population in United States of America with the
Vietnamese population in Canada and in Australia . It provides an
interesting insight of the different experiences that the Vietnamese community
has had in these three different countries.
Vietnamese Refugees in the United States
of America
The Vietnamese refugees began coming into
the US after the fall of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Mostly upper
middle class urbanites composed this first wave of refugee immigration from
1975-1978. These people brought financial and cultural capital with them to
help them settle down in United States of America . They had a professional
occupation, higher education, and some knowledge of English. Their religion
also played an important role here because many of these refugees were Roman
Catholics originally from North Vietnam , so it was easier to adapt to the
strong Christian sentiment in the US . These refugees fled from the new North
Vietnamese Communist government and settled in South Vietnam after 1954 as
refugees. They got help from the US government to leave by ship or airplane in
safely organized groups in return for the favors they did for the US military.
The second wave refugees were
mostly ethnic Chinese who came to United States during 1978 - 1979. They had to
leave their homeland because of the hostility that they faced for decades and
they became the target of the new Communist government. . These refugees who
fled by fishing boats or bribed their way out of Vietnam had middle-upper class
backgrounds.
The third wave Vietnamese
refugees, who came around 1978 – 198, were commonly labeled as the
“boat people”. They were basically rural farmers. These refugees
had little or no prior encounter with the western culture and had to go through
brutal conditions to reach the United States . They had to go through
conditions such as murder, rape, extreme hunger, getting lost, being ship
wrecked and recaptured.
The American government dispersed these
refugees across the country carefully to avoid too much concentration in a particular
state and to encourage assimilation into American culture. Because of this
dispersion it became assured that Vietnamese Americans are to be found in
almost every large metropolitan area in the US including areas that
historically have not experienced any ethnic immigration before. Vietnamese
Americans are mainly dispersed in large metropolitan areas like California ,
Texas , Virginia , New York , and Florida , mostly areas that has similar
weather conditions as Vietnam ’s. Currently, the Vietnamese American
community is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the US with an
estimated population of over 1,100,000 people in 2000. The Vietnamese Americans
are the 4th largest Asian American community after the Filipino, Chinese, and
Asian Indian Americans.
The distribution of Vietnamese Americans throughout United States
of America is presented here:
Vietnamese population by U.S. Region
U.S. Census 2000
Total Enumerated Vietnamese
Population in the U.S. - 1,122,528 (593,213 – 1990
- Western States - 564, 424
- Southern States - 335,679
- Northwestern States - 115,487
- Midwestern States - 106,938
Vietnamese Population in U.S. States
U.S. Census 2000
1990 figures in parentheses
1. California - 447,032
(276,759)
2. Texas - 134,961 (66,329)
3. Washington - 46,149
(18,246)
4. Virginia - 37,309 (21,729)
5. Massachusetts - 33,962
(14,653)
6. Florida - 33,190 (15,221)
7. Pennsylvania - 30,037
(14,961)
8. Georgia - 29,016 (6,990)
9. Louisiana - 24,358
(16,545)
10. New York - 23,818
(15,943)
11. Illinois - 19,101 (9,329)
12. Oregon - 18,890 (8,375)
13. Minnesota - 18,824
(9,543)
Clustering of the Vietnamese community in
United States of America
Among the 50 states, California contains
the largest Vietnamese population - 447,032, which represent about 40% of
the entire Vietnamese population in the U.S. And over 56% of the total
population lives in California and Texas . So despite the government policies
to stop concentration in a particular state, Vietnamese communities have ended
up forming some kind of concentration in some particular states in growing
numbers through word of mouth and through extensive kinship and family
networks. Currently the Vietnamese American community is one of the fastest
growing ethnic groups in the US with an estimated population of over 1,100,000
people in 2000. The Vietnamese Americans are the 4th largest Asian American
community after the Filipino, Chinese, and Asian Indian Americans.
According to U.S. census data released in
May 2001, 1,122,528 Vietnamese were counted across the United States in last
year’s census. This figure is nearly double the 593,213 Vietnamese
enumerated across the nation in the 1990 census. Among the four major regions
of the United States , the greatest number of Vietnamese was counted in the
Western states- 564,424. The next largest number of Vietnamese resided in the
Southern states - 335,679. Just over 100,000 Vietnamese were counted in both
the Northeastern and Midwestern states.
Among the nation’s cities, a
remarkable 20% of the entire U.S. Vietnamese population (233,573) was
enumerated in just one metropolitan area - the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange
County. The next largest number of Vietnamese was observed in the San
Francisco-San Jose metropolitan area (146,613). The California cities were
followed by the very large Vietnamese populations in two Texas metropolitan
areas-Houston (63,924) and Dallas (47,090). The Washington D.C. metropolitan
area (43,709), with a sizable concentration of Vietnamese in its Virginia
suburbs, possessed the 5th largest Vietnamese population enumerated among
American cities.
By
Tasnuva Kamal Topa
Transnational
Migration and Diasporic Communities
ISTD/ANTH
5950
Prepared
for
Prof.
Van Dusenbery
12/19/2002