According to the 2000 Census, there are 1,122,528 people who identify themselves as Vietnamese alone or 1,223,736 in combination with other ethnicities. Of those, 447,032 (39.8%) live in California and 134,961 (12.0%) in Texas. The largest concentration of Vietnamese found outside of Vietnam is found in Orange County, California, totaling 135,548. Vietnamese American businesses are ubiquitous in Little Saigon, located in Westminster and Garden Grove, where they constitute 30.7% and 21.4% of the population, respectively.
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 academics, and their number was insignificant. The Fall of Saigon (termed the "liberation of Saigon" by the Communist Government of Vietnam) on April 30, 1975, which ended the Vietnam War, prompted the first large-scale wave of immigration from Vietnam. Many people who had close ties with the Americans feared communist reprisals, and 125,000 of them left Vietnam during the spring of 1975. This group was generally highly skilled and educated and their leaving constituted a severe Brain drain for Vietnam. They were airlifted by the U.S. government to bases in the Philippines and Guam, and were subsequently transferred to various refugee centers in the United States. These refugees initially faced resentment by Americans following the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam War, and a poll taken in 1975 showed only 36% in favor of Vietnamese immigration. Even so, President Gerald Ford and other officials strongly supported them and passed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act in 1975, which allowed them to enter the United States under a special status. In order to prevent the refugees from forming ethnic enclaves and to minimize their impact on local communities, they were scattered all over the country. Within a few years, however, many resettled in California, Texas and Virginia, giving those states the largest Vietnamese American populations.
The year 1978 began a second wave of Vietnamese refugees that lasted until the mid-1980s. As people faced being sent to "reeducation camps" (essentially forced labor concentration camps) or being forced to evacuate to "new economic zones," about two million fled Vietnam in small, unsafe, and crowded boats. These "Boat people" were generally less educated and skilled than the people in the first wave. If they escaped pirates, they usually ended up in asylum camps in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong or the Philippines, where they might be allowed to enter countries that agreed to accept them. Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, reducing restrictions on entry, while the Vietnamese government established the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in response to world outcry, allowing people to leave Vietnam legally for family reunions and for humanitarian reasons. Additional American laws were passed to allow children of American servicemen and former political prisoners and their families to enter the United States. Between 1981 and 2000, the United States accepted 531,310 Vietnamese refugees and asylees.
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As a relatively recent immigrant group, most Vietnamese Americans are either first or second-generation Americans. They have the lowest distribution of people with more than one race among the major Asian American groups. As many as 1,009,627 people 5 years and older speak Vietnamese at home, making it the 7th most spoken language in the United States. As refugees, Vietnamese Americans have some of the highest rates of naturalization.
Recently, Vietnamese Americans have exercised considerable political power in Orange County, Silicon Valley, and other areas. Many have won public offices at the local and statewide levels in California (mostly as Republicans). Several Vietnamese Americans serve or served in the city councils of Westminster and Garden Grove; the mayor pro tempore of Westminster is a Vietnamese American. In 2004, Van Tran and Hubert Vo were elected to the state legislatures of California and Texas, respectively. Some Vietnamese Americans have recently lobbied many city governments to make the former South Vietnamese flag instead of the current flag of Vietnam the symbol of Vietnamese in the United States, a move that the Vietnamese government objected to.
Vietnamese Americans vary widely in income and social class levels. Many Vietnamese Americans are Upper class professionals who fled from the increasing power of the Communist Party after the Vietnam War, while others work primarily in blue-collar jobs. In San Jose, California, for example, this diversity in income levels can be seen in the different Vietnamese-American neighborhoods scattered across Santa Clara County. In the Downtown San Jose area, many Vietnamese are working-class and are employed in many blue-collar positions such as restaurant cooks, repairmen, and movers, while the Evergreen and Berryessa sections of the city are affluent middle-class neighborhoods with large Vietnamese American populations, many of whom work in Silicon Valley's computer, networking, and aerospace industries.
Some Vietnamese Americans are ethnic Eurasians and Amerasians. These Eurasians are descendants of native Vietnamese and early (white) French settlers during colonial period in the early 1900s. Amerasians are descendants of native Vietnamese and white (sometimes black) American soldiers during the Vietnam War.