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{{Infobox Ethnic group
|group = Vietnamese American
|image =<div style="white-space:nowrap;"><!--If you swap out an image, change the "x##px" entry for EACH image in the row so that the width of the row lines up with the others-->
[[Image:Cung Le at WonderCon 2009.JPG|x100px]][[File:JosephCaoOfficialPhoto2009.jpg|x100px]][[Image:DatPhan.JPG|x100px]]<br/>[[Image:DR- EUGENE TRINH.jpg|x109px]][[Image:Janet Nguyen cropped.jpg|x109px]][[Image:Tila Tequila 2008.jpg|x109px]]<br>[[Image:MaggieQSDCCJuly10.jpg|x109px]]
|caption = <small>[[Cung Le]]{{·}} [[Joseph Cao]]{{·}} [[Dat Phan]]<br/>
[[Eugene H. Trinh]]{{·}} [[Janet Nguyen]]{{·}} [[Tila Tequila]]<br>
[[Maggie Q]]</small>
|poptime = '''1,642,950'''<br/ ><small>0.55% of the US population (2007)</small>.<ref name="census2007">{{cite web
|publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]]
|title=2006 American Community Survey: Selected Population Profile in the United States
|url=http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/IPTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-geo_id=NBSP&-qr_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201&-qr_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201PR&-qr_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201T&-qr_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201TPR&-ds_name=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_&-reg=ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201:048;ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201PR:048;ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201T:048;ACS_2007_1YR_G00_S0201TPR:048&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-format=
}}</ref>
|popplace = [[Orange County, California]]; [[San Jose, California]]; [[Greater Houston]], [[Seattle metropolitan area]], [[Northern Virginia]], [[Orlando metropolitan area]], [[Atlanta metropolitan area]], [[List of U.S. cities with large Vietnamese American populations|others]]
|langs = [[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]], [[American English]]
|rels = Dominant [[Mahayana Buddhism]] with [[Confucianism]] ([[Ancestor Worship]]), large [[Christianity|Christian]] minority (chiefly [[Roman Catholic]])
|related = [[Vietnamese people]], [[Overseas Vietnamese]], [[Vietnamese Canadian]]s, [[Southeast Asian American]]s, [[Asian American]]s
}}

A '''Vietnamese American''' ({{lang-vi|Người Mỹ gốc Việt}}) is an [[United States|American]] of [[Vietnamese people|Vietnamese]] descent.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761587517/vietnamese_americans.html|title=Vietnamese Americans|author=James M. Freeman|publisher=Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2008|accessdate=2009-02-07}}</ref> 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 or poverty. Forced to flee from their [[Vietnam|homeland]] and often thrust into poor urban neighborhoods, these newcomers have nevertheless managed to establish strong communities in a short amount of time.

==Demographics==

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 language|Vietnamese]] at home&mdash;making it the seventh-most spoken [[Languages in the United States|language in the United States]]. As refugees, Vietnamese Americans have some of the highest rates of naturalization.<ref>{{cite web
|title=Fact Sheet: Naturalization Rate Estimates: Stock vs. Flow
|author=Derekh D. F. Cornwell
|publisher=[[Department of Homeland Security]]
|date=November 2006
|accessdate=2009-10-23
|url=http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_naturalizations_fs_2004.pdf}}</ref> 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.<ref name="census2006">{{cite web
|publisher=[[United States Census Bureau]]
|title=2006 American Community Survey: Selected Population Profile in the United States
|url=http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/IPTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201PR&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201T&-qr_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201TPR&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-reg=ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201:048;ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201PR:048;ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201T:048;ACS_2006_EST_G00_S0201TPR:048&-_lang=en&-redoLog=false&-format=
}}</ref>

According to the [[United States 2000 Census|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]]&mdash;totalling 135,548. Vietnamese American businesses are ubiquitous in [[Little Saigon]], located in [[Westminster, California|Westminster]] and [[Garden Grove, California|Garden Grove]], where they constitute 30.7 and 21.4 percent of the population, respectively. States such as [[New York]], [[Louisiana]], [[Pennsylvania]], [[Massachusetts]], [[Illinois]], [[Minnesota]], [[Washington (U.S. state)|Washington]], [[Florida]], [[Virginia]] and to some extent, [[Rhode Island]] have fast growing Vietnamese populations. The [[San Francisco Bay Area]], [[Seattle]] metropolitan area, [[Dallas-Fort Worth]] metropolitan area, [[Northern Virginia]], [[Los Angeles]] metropolitan area and the [[Houston, Texas|Houston]] metropolitan area have sizable Vietnamese communities. Recently, the Vietnamese immigration pattern has shifted to other states like [[Oklahoma]] ([[Oklahoma City]] in particular) and [[Oregon]] ([[Portland, Oregon|Portland]] in particular).

[[Image:Vietnamese USC2000 PHS.svg|thumb|right|300px|Spread of the Vietnamese language in the United States]]
Vietnamese Americans are much more likely to be [[Christianity|Christians]] than Vietnamese that are residing in Vietnam. While Christians (mainly [[Roman Catholicism|Roman Catholics]]) make up about 6% of Vietnam's total population, they compose as much as 23% of the total Vietnamese American population.<ref>Bankston, Carl L. III. 2000. "Vietnamese American Catholicism: Transplanted and Flourishing." U.S. Catholic Historian 18 (1): 36-53</ref>

<!-- 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 Vietnamese. {{Fact|date=March 2007}} Additionally, the younger generations have become much more acculturated to the Western culture than their traditional Vietnamese culture. {{Fact|date=March 2007}} 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. {{Fact|date=March 2007}} -->
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.<ref name="census2006"/>

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="margin: 1em 0 1em 1em; float:center; clear:center;"
|+ '''Growth of Vietnamese Americans (alone)'''
|-
! Year
! Number
|-
|[[United States Census, 1970|1970]]
||<p style="text-align:right;">'''N/A'''
|-
|[[United States Census, 1980|1980]]
||<p style="text-align:right;">'''245,025'''
|-
|[[United States Census, 1990|1990]]
||<p style="text-align:right;">'''614,547'''
|-
|[[United States Census, 2000|2000]]
||<p style="text-align:right;">'''1,122,528'''
|-
|2007 (est)
||<p style="text-align:right;">'''1,642,950'''
|}

==History==
[[Image:Chantroimoi01.jpg|thumb|right|225px|Vietnamese refugees at [[Fort Chaffee]], Arkansas, 1975]]
[[Image:Vietnamkrieg Bootsflüchtling 1980.jpg|thumb|right|225px|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&mdash;which ended the [[Vietnam War]]&mdash;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 Assistance 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&mdash;especially former military officers and government employees&mdash;were sent to Communist "[[reeducation camp]]s," 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]]&mdash;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&mdash;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 camp]]s 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.

==Political activism==
[[Image:South Vietnamese flag parade.jpg|thumb|right|225px|Vietnamese Americans parading with the South Vietnamese flag during Tet]]
According to a study by the [[Manhattan Institute]] in 2008, Vietnamese Americans are among the most assimilated immigrant groups in the [[United States]].<ref name="manhattan">{{cite web|url=http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_53.htm|author=Jacob L. Vigdor|title=Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States|publisher=[[Manhattan Institute]]|month=May | year=2008|accessdate=2008-05-18}}</ref> 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.<ref name="manhattan"/> 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.

As refugees from a Communist country, many Vietnamese Americans are strongly opposed to communism. In a poll conducted for the ''[[Orange County Register]]'' in 2000, 71% of respondents ranked fighting communism as "top priority" or "very important".<ref name="collet">{{cite conference
| first = Christian
| last = Collet
| authorlink =
| title = The Determinants of Vietnamese American Political Participation: Findings from the January 2000 ''Orange County Register'' Poll
| booktitle = 2000 Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian American
| pages =
| publisher =
| date = May 26, 2000
| location = Scottsdale, Arizona
| url = http://www1.doshisha.ac.jp/~ccollet/AAAS%202000%20(Collet).pdf
| doi =
| id =
| accessdate = |format=PDF}}</ref> Vietnamese Americans regularly stage protests against the Vietnamese government, its [[human rights]] policy and those whom they perceive to be sympathetic to it.<ref name="protests">{{Cite journal
| last = Ong
| first = Nhu-Ngoc T.
| author-link =
| last2 = Meyer
| first2 = David S.
| author2-link =
| title = Protest and Political Incorporation: Vietnamese American Protests, 1975–2001
| journal = Center for the Study of Democracy
| volume = 04
| issue = 08
| pages =
| date = April 1, 2004
| url = http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/04-08/
| doi =
| id =
| postscript = <!--None--> }}</ref> For example, in 1999, protests against a video store owner in [[Westminster, California]], who displayed the [[Flag of Vietnam|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 debates regarding [[free speech]]. Membership in the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] was once considered anathema among Vietnamese Americans because it was seen as less anti-communist than the Republican Party. However, their support for the [[Republican Party (United States)|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.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-vietdems29feb29,0,772805.story|title=Leaning left in Little Saigon|author=My-Thuan Tran and Christian Berthelsen|publisher=[[Los Angeles Times]]|date=2008-02-29|accessdate=2008-03-03 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20080314155540/http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-vietdems29feb29,0,772805.story |archivedate = March 14, 2008}}</ref> However, the Republican Party still has overwhelming support; in Orange County, Vietnamese Americans registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats at 55% and 22%, respectively,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ocblog.net/ocblog/2007/02/postelection_sp.html/|title=OC Blog: Post-Election Spinning|accessdate=2007-02-09 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20071014061134/http://ocblog.net/ocblog/2007/02/postelection_sp.html/ |archivedate = October 14, 2007}}</ref> while a national survey in 2008 showed that 22% identify with the Democratic Party while 29% identify with the Republican Party.<ref name="naas">{{cite web|author=Jane Junn, Taeku Lee, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Janelle Wong|title=National Asian American Survey: Asian Americans and the 2008 Election|url=http://www.naasurvey.com/assets/NAAS-National-report.pdf|format=PDF|date=2008-10-06|accessdate=2008-10-06}}</ref> Exit polls during the [[United States presidential election, 2004|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]].<ref>{{cite news
|url=http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/04/26/asian_americans_step_up_to_ballot_box/
|title=Asian-Americans step up to ballot box
|author= Stephanie Ebbert
|date=April 26, 2005
|publisher=Boston Globe
|accessdate=2007-05-25}}</ref> In a poll conducted prior to the [[United States presidential election, 2008|2008 presidential election]], two-thirds of Vietnamese Americans who made up their mind stated they would vote for the Republican candidate [[John McCain]], in stark contrast to the other Asian American groups surveyed.<ref name="naas"/> The Republican Party's particularly strong voice of [[Anti-Communism]] tends to make it more attractive to older Vietnamese Americans and first generation Vietnamese Americans, especially with their arrival to the US during the [[Reagan Administration]].

Recently, Vietnamese Americans have exercised considerable political power in [[Orange County, California|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 has served as mayor of [[Rosemead, California]] and several serve or have served in the city councils of Westminster, Garden Grove, San Jose,<ref>San Jose Councilwoman [[Madison Nguyen]]</ref> and places as varied as [[Clarkston, Georgia]]. In 2008, Westminster became the first city to have a majority Vietnamese American city council.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ocvote2-2008dec02,0,5907354.story|date=2008-12-02|accessdate=2008-12-02|title=Orange County's final vote tally puts 2 Vietnamese Americans in winners' seats|author=My-Thuan Tran|publisher=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> In 2004, [[Van Tran]], a Republican candidate and [[Hubert Vo]], a Democratic candidate, were elected to the state legislatures of California and Texas, respectively. [[Viet Dinh]] was the [[United States Assistant Attorney General|Assistant Attorney General of the United States]] from 2001 to 2003 who was the chief architect of the [[USA PATRIOT Act]]. In 2006, as many as 15 Vietnamese Americans were running for elective office in California alone,<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=5ea83a9956aa69770843f4e65f153519|title=Big Politics in Little Saigon}}</ref> a sign of the growing maturity of the community. For federal elective office, at least four candidates have run for a seat in the [[United States House of Representatives]] as their party's official candidate.<ref>[[Tuan Nguyen]][http://lcweb2.loc.gov/elect2002/catalog/1783.html], [[North Carolina]] in 2002, [[Tan Nguyen]][http://65.45.193.26:8026/cms/acct/tan4congress/main/], California in 2006, [[Joseph Cao]] in 2008, and [[Van Tran]] in 2010, all Republicans</ref> Some Vietnamese Americans have recently lobbied many city and state governments to make the former [[Flag of South Vietnam|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]].<ref>[http://vcflaguta.com/FlagRecognizing.html Resolution Recognizing: The Yellow Flag With Three Red Stripes as The Official Flag of the Vietnamese American]</ref>

During the months following [[Hurricane Katrina]], the Vietnamese American community in [[New Orleans]], among the first to return to the city, rallied against a landfill used to dump debris near their community.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/us/08landfill.html|title=A New Landfill in New Orleans Sets Off a Battle|author=Leslie Eaton|date=2006-05-06|accessdate=2008-09-02|publisher=The New York Times}}</ref> After months of legal wrangling, the landfill was closed, which the activists consider a victory, and the Vietnamese-American community in New Orleans became a political force.<ref name=vietnamese-political-force>{{cite news
|url=http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl103107khvietnameseno.1c3d96d66.html
|title=After Katrina, Vietnamese become political force in New Orleans
|author=Michael Kunzelman
|agency=Associated Press
|date=2007-10-31
|accessdate=2008-11-06}} {{Dead link|date=September 2010|bot=H3llBot}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2008/08/a_village_calle.html|title=New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles: After tragedy, a community finds its political voice|publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]]|date=2008-08-28|author=S. Leo Chiang|accessdate=2008-09-02}}</ref> In 2008, [[Joseph Cao]], a Katrina activist, won [[Louisiana's 2nd congressional district]] seat in the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] as a Republican, becoming the first Vietnamese American elected to [[United States Congress|Congress]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-jefferson7-2008dec07,0,5062570.story|title=Indicted Louisiana Rep. William J. Jefferson loses reelection bid|agency=Associated Press|publisher=The Los Angeles Times|accessdate=2008-12-07|date=2008-12-07}}</ref>

==Economics==
Vietnamese 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, California|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, San Jose, California|Berryessa]] sections of the city are middle- to upper&ndash;middle class neighborhoods with large Vietnamese American populations&mdash;many of whom work in [[Silicon Valley]]'s computer, networking, and aerospace industries. In [[Little Saigon]] of [[Orange County, California|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 primarily 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.

[[Image:Phuoc Loc Tho.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Phước Lộc Thọ, the first Vietnamese-American shopping center in Little Saigon, California]]

Many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in [[Little Saigon]]s 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&mdash;especially first or second-generation immigrants&mdash;open supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries specializing in [[bánh mì]], [[cosmetologist|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&mdash;such as [[Louisiana]], [[Texas]], [[Mississippi]], and [[Alabama]]&mdash;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.

[[Image:Tet Festival Little Saigon.jpg|thumb|Tet Festival in [[Little Saigon]], [[Orange County, California]]]]

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.

Recent immigrants who do not speak English well tend to work in menial labor jobs like assembly, restaurant/shop workers, [[Nail salon|nail]] and [[hair salon]]s. As much as 80% of nail technicians in California and 43% nationwide are Vietnamese Americans.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/05/local/me-nails5|title=Vietnamese nail down the U.S. manicure business|author=My-Thuan Tran|publisher=Los Angeles Times|date=2008-05-05|accessdate=2009-10-27}}</ref> 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 and many will [[Remittances|send earnings back]] to Vietnam to help family members abroad. This concept and economic niche has proven so successful that visiting overseas Vietnamese entrepreneurs from Britain and Canada have also adopted the Vietnamese American model and opened several nail salons in the United Kingdom, 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. However, the [[Dumping (pricing policy)|dumping]] of imported shrimp, ironically from Vietnam, has affected their source of livelihood.<ref>[http://www.ailf.org/ipc/refugeestoamericans.asp ]{{Dead link|date=April 2009}}</ref>

==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, on the [[Gulf Coast of the United States|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.<ref>[http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=8f3bffe189a164998e5b57555b450aca ]{{Dead link|date=April 2009}}</ref> Vietnamese American fishermen banded together to form the first Vietnamese Fishermen Association of America to represent their interests.

Some studies,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.russellsage.org/publications/books/0-87154-994-8 |title=Russell Sage Foundation |publisher=Russellsage.org |date= |accessdate=2009-04-13}}</ref> 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{{Who|date=January 2010}} 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_asian_american_studies/v002/2.1br_zhou.html |title=Project MUSE - Journal of Asian American Studies - Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States |publisher=Muse.jhu.edu |date= |accessdate=2009-04-13}}</ref> Recent studies have indicated that juvenile delinquency among Vietnamese Americans may have increased in the 21st century, as ethnic community ties have weakened.<ref>[http://tulane.edu/liberal-arts/sociology/upload/A108_Zhou_Bankston_Delinquency-and-Acculturation2006.pdf Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III. "Delinquency and Acculturation in the Twenty-First Century: A Decade’s Change in a Vietnamese American Community".] Pp. 117-139 in Immigration and Crime: Race, Ethnicity and Violence, edited by Ramiro Martinez, Jr. and Abel Valenzuela, Jr. New York: NYU Press, 2006.</ref>

==Ethnic subgroups==
While the census data only count those who report themselves to be [[Vietnamese people|ethnically Vietnamese]], the way some other ethnic groups from Vietnam view themselves may affect census reporting.

===Hoa===
{{Original research|date=November 2008}}
{{Unreferenced section|date=July 2008}}
A 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 [[Yue Chinese|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-switching|code-switch]] between Cantonese and Vietnamese when conversing with [[Hoa]] immigrants from Vietnam, and are mostly able to speak to ethnic Vietnamese. [[Teochew dialect|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 Chinese|Mandarin]] as a third or fourth language, in some aspects of business and interaction.

The population distribution of [[Hoa]] people in the United States varies. For instance, many [[Hoa]] immigrants tend to reside in communities where there is a concentration of ethnic Vietnamese (such as in "Little Saigon" in Orange County, California or San Jose), while others have chosen to intermingle and concentrate with Chinese diasporas (namely with emigres from Mainland China and Hong Kong) as can be seen in [[San Francisco]] and [[Los Angeles]] in California and in [[New York City]].

===Eurasians and Amerasians ===
Some Vietnamese Americans are racially [[Eurasian (mixed ancestry)|Eurasian]]s&mdash;persons of European and Asian descent. These Eurasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and [[French people|French]] settlers and soldiers and sometimes Hoa during the French colonial period (1883–1945) or during the [[First Indochina War]] (1946–1954).

[[Amerasian]]s 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."[http://www.salon.com/11/sneakpeeks/sneakpeeks6.html] Many of these initial generation of Amerasians, as well as their mothers, experienced significant social and institutional discrimination both in Vietnam&mdash;where they were subject to denial of basic civil rights like an education, the discrimination worsening following the American withdrawal in 1973&mdash;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.<ref>[http://www.amerasianusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=29 AmerasianUSA - Amerasian Citizenship Initiative - Issue Background<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref><ref>[http://www.amerasianfoundation.org/amerasianlaws.php "U.S. Legislation Regarding Amerasians". Amerasian Foundation; website retrieved January 3, 2007.]</ref><ref>[http://www.house.gov/lofgren/news/2003/pr_031022_Amerasian.html "Lofgren Introduces Citizenship Bill for Children Born in Vietnam to American Servicemen and Vietnamese Women During the Vietnam War". Whitehouse.gov; October 22, 2003.]</ref> Such discrimination was typically even greater for children of Black or Hispanic servicemen than for children of White fathers.<ref>[http://www-mcnair.berkeley.edu/99McNairJournal/yoon/yoon.pdf Yoon, Diana H. "The American Response to Amerasian Identity and Rights". Berkeley McNair Research Journal; Winter, 1999 (vol. 7); pp. 71—84.]</ref>

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.<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~thantran/Amerasian.html "Vietnamese-Amerasians: Where Do They Belong?" Thanh Tran; December 16, 1999.]</ref>

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.<ref>[http://web.syr.edu/~kjhall/ETS192/ab/ab.htm ]{{Dead link|date=April 2009}}</ref><ref>[http://www.amerasianusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=29]</ref>
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 people|Khmer]] and [[Cham (Asia)|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 notable books include [[Quang X. Pham]]'s acclaimed 2005 father-son memoir ''A Sense of Duty'',<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=19e393d84a8f78be589f04adf95ad210|periodical=New American Media|last=Nguyen|first=Denise|title=A Sense of Duty: My Father, My American Journey|date=2005-04-16|accessdate=2010-07-30|postscript=<!-- Bot inserted parameter. Either remove it; or change its value to "." for the cite to end in a ".", as necessary. -->}}</ref> [[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.

==See also==
* [[Asian American]]
* [[Boat people]]
* [[Diaspora studies]]
* [[Hyphenated American]]
* [[List of U.S. cities with large Vietnamese American populations]]
* [[List of Vietnamese Americans]]
* [[American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam]]
* [[Little Saigon]]
* [[Overseas Vietnamese]]
* [[Refugees]]
* [[Vietnamese people]]

==Further reading==
* Chan, Sucheng, ed. . ''The Vietnamese American 1.5 Generation: Stories of War, Revolution, Flight, and New Beginnings'' (2006) 323pp
* Tran, Tuyen Ngoc, “Behind the Smoke and Mirrors: The Vietnamese in California, 1975–1994” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2007). ''Dissertation Abstracts International,'' 2008, Vol. 69 Issue 3, p1130-1130,
*[[Zhou, Min]] and [[Carl L. Bankston]], ''[[Growing Up American]]: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the United States'' (1998) New York: Russell Sage Foundation
==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}

==External links==
*[http://www.tolerance.org/teach/web/vietnamese/ Teaching Tolerance - Vietnamese Americans]
*[http://www.searac.org/seastatprofilemay04.pdf Census Data]
*[http://www.vatv.org/VAP.html Vietnamese American population by city]
*[http://repositories.cdlib.org/csd/04-08/ Vietnamese-American Protests from 1975–2001] by Nhu-Ngoc T. Ong and David S. Meyer
*[http://www.vietam.org/ Vietnamese American Heritage Project] at the [[Smithsonian Institution]]
*[http://www.asian-nation.org/vietnamese-community.shtml Asian-Nation: Vietnamese American Community] by C.N. Le, Ph.D.
*[http://www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/collections/sea/seaexhibit/vietnamam.html Southeast Asian Archive]
*[http://www.vstudies.org Vietnamese Studies Internet Resource Center]
*[http://www.avillagecalledversailles.com/ Documentary film centered on Vietnamese American community in New Orleans]
*[http://www.ocregister.com/news/2005/saigon/index.shtml 30 years after the fall of Saigon]: from ''[[The Orange County Register]]''
*[http://www.tolerance.org/teach/web/vietnamese/vac_pdfs/vac_timeline_02.pdf Vietnamese American history]
*[http://www.tolerance.org/teach/web/vietnamese/vac_pdfs/vac_brief_history.pdf The Experience of Vietnamese Refugee Children in the United States]
*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4469739.stm Vietnamese who found new lives]: from the BBC
* [http://www.viet-nam.org/ Vietnamese American Council]
*[http://www.ncvaonline.org/index.html National Congress of Vietnamese Americans]
*[http://ccet.louisiana.edu/03a_Cultural_Tourism_Files/01.02_The_People/Vietnamese.html The Vietnamese Population in Louisiana]
* [http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-context=dt&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U&-CONTEXT=dt&-mt_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_PCT019&-tree_id=403&-redoLog=true&-all_geo_types=N&-geo_id=01000US&-search_results=01000US&-format=&-_lang=en US Census 2000 foreign born population by country]
*[http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-4/student.htm The Biculturation of the Vietnamese Student] by Min Zhou and Carl L. Bankston III
*[http://www.hmongstudies.org/VietnameseFamilies.html Vietnamese Families, Family Life, and Gender Roles]
*[http://www.achievementseminars.com/Seminar_Series_2005_2006/readings/Zhou_Bankston_Delinquency_and_Acculturation_2004.pdf Delinquency and Acculturation in a Vietnamese Community]
* [http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr002/dragon.htm The Dragon and the Eagle: Toward a Vietnamese American Theology], Originally published in Theology Digest 43:3 (Fall 2001).

{{Asian Americans}}
{{Overseas Vietnamese}}

[[Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats]]
[[Category:Ethnic groups in the United States]]
[[Category:American people of Asian descent]]
[[Category:American people of Vietnamese descent| ]]
[[Category:Vietnamese diaspora|American]]

[[fr:Viêtnamo-Américains]]
[[ja:ベトナム系アメリカ人]]
[[pl:Wietnamczycy w Ameryce Północnej]]
[[ru:Вьетнамцы в США]]
[[vi:Người Mỹ gốc Việt]]
[[zh:越裔美國人]]

Revision as of 20:01, 29 September 2011

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