Vietnamese Americans
Vietnamese Americans (Vietnamese: Người Mỹ gốc Việt) are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry.[5] They comprise approximately half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group following Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, and Filipino Americans. There are approximately 2.3 million people of Vietnamese descent residing in the U.S. as of 2023.
The Vietnamese community in the United States was minimal until the exodus of South Vietnamese refugees to the country following the end of Vietnam War in 1975. More than half of Vietnamese Americans reside in the two most populous states of California and Texas, primarily their large urban areas.[6]
Demographics[edit]
Income[edit]
In 2019, the median household income for U.S.-born Vietnamese Americans was $82,400[7] As a relatively-recent immigrant group, most Vietnamese Americans are either first or second generation Americans. As many as one million people five years of age and older speak Vietnamese at home, making it the fifth-most-spoken language in the U.S. In the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS), 76 percent of foreign-born Vietnamese are naturalized U.S. citizens (compared to 67 percent of people from Southeast Asia and 46 percent of the total U.S. foreign-born population). Of those born outside the United States, 73.1 percent entered before 2000, 21.2 percent from 2000 and 2009 and 5.7 percent after 2010.[8]
In 2018, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the total population of Vietnamese Americans was 2,162,610 (92.1% reporting one race, 7.2% reporting two races, 0.7% reporting three races, and 0.1% reporting four or more races).[9] California and Texas had the highest concentrations of Vietnamese Americans: 40 and 12 percent of Vietnamese immigrants, respectively. Other states with concentrations of Vietnamese Americans were Washington, Florida (four percent each) and Virginia (three percent).[10] The largest number of Vietnamese outside Vietnam is in Orange County, California (184,153, or 6.1 percent of the county's population),[11] followed by Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties; the three counties accounted for 26 percent of the Vietnamese immigrant population in the United States.[10]
Many Vietnamese American businesses exist in the Little Saigon of Westminster and Garden Grove, where Vietnamese Americans make up 40.2 and 27.7 percent of the population respectively. About 41 percent of the Vietnamese immigrant population lives in five major metropolitan areas: in descending order, Los Angeles, San Jose, Houston, San Francisco and Dallas-Fort Worth.[10] The Vietnamese immigration pattern has shifted to other cities, including Denver, Boston, Chicago, Oklahoma (Oklahoma City and Tulsa in particular) and Oregon (Portland in particular).
Community issues[edit]
Language barrier[edit]
Language was the first barrier Vietnamese refugees with limited English proficiency had to overcome. English uses tonal inflection sparingly (primarily for questions); Vietnamese, a tonal language, uses variations in tone to differentiate between meanings of a sound. Ma can have one of seven meanings, depending on tone: "mother", "ghost", "but", "code", "rice plant", "cheek" or "tomb".[21] Another difference between Vietnamese and English is the former's widespread use of status-related pronouns. You is the widely used second-person singular pronoun in American English, but the Vietnamese second-person singular pronoun varies by gender (anh or chị), social status (ông or bà) and relationship (bạn, cậu or mày).[22]
Employment[edit]
Vietnamese Americans' income and social classes are diverse. In contrast to Vietnamese refugees who settled in France or Germany, and similar to their counterparts who arrived in Canada, The Czech Republic, The United Kingdom, Poland and Australia, refugees arriving in the United States often had a lower socioeconomic standing in their home country and more difficulty integrating due to greater linguistic and cultural barriers.
Vietnamese Americans have arrived in the U.S. primarily as refugees, with little or no money. While not as academically or financially accomplished collectively as their East Asian counterparts, census data indicates that Vietnamese Americans are an upwardly-mobile group; their economic status improved substantially between 1989 and 1999.[10]
Most first-wave Vietnamese immigrants initially worked at low-paying jobs in small services or industries.[26] Finding work was more difficult for second-wave and subsequent immigrants, due to their limited educational background and job skills. They were employed in blue-collar jobs, such as electrical engineering and machine assembling.[22] In San Jose, California, the economic difference can be seen in the Vietnamese American neighborhoods of Santa Clara County. In downtown San Jose, many Vietnamese work as restaurant cooks, repairmen and movers. 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.
Many Vietnamese Americans have established businesses in Little Saigons and Chinatowns throughout North America, and have initiated the development and revitalization of older Chinatowns. Many Vietnamese Americans are small business owners. According to a 2002 Census Bureau survey of Vietnamese-owned firms, more than 50 percent of the businesses are personal services or repair and maintenance. The period from 1997 to 2002 saw substantial growth in the number of Vietnamese-owned business.[27] Throughout the country, many Vietnamese (especially first or second-generation immigrants) have opened supermarkets, restaurants, bánh mì bakeries, beauty salons, barber shops and auto-repair businesses. Restaurants owned by Vietnamese Americans tend to serve Vietnamese cuisine, Vietnamized Chinese cuisine or both, and have popularized phở and chả giò in the U.S. In 2002 34.2 percent of Vietnamese-owned businesses were in California, followed by Texas with 16.5 percent.[27]
Young Vietnamese Americans adults are well educated, and often provide professional services. Since older Vietnamese Americans have difficulty interacting with the non-Vietnamese professional class, many Vietnamese Americans provide specialized professional services to fellow immigrants. Of these, a small number are owned by Vietnamese Americans of Hoa ethnicity. In the Gulf Coast region (Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama), Vietnamese Americans are involved with the fishing industry and account for 45 to 85 percent of the region's shrimp business. However, the dumping of imported shrimp from Vietnam has impacted their livelihood.[28] Many remain employed in Silicon Valley's computer and networking industry, despite layoffs following the closure of various high-tech companies. Recent immigrants not yet proficient in English work in assembly, restaurants, shops and nail and hair salons. Eighty percent of California's nail technicians and 43 percent nationwide are Vietnamese Americans.[29] Nail-salon work is skilled manual labor which requires limited English-speaking ability. Some Vietnamese Americans see the work as a way to accumulate wealth quickly, and many send remittances to family members in Vietnam. Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Canada and Europe have adopted the U.S. model and opened nail salons in their country of residence, where few nail salons previously existed.