COLUMN ONE : Few Viet Exiles Find U.S.Riches : Refugees have forged an enduring stereotype of economic and intellectual overachievement. But most live in poverty, with significant language and cultural handicaps.

Fifteen years after the fall of Saigon, which triggered an exodus of more than 1 million refugees, Vietnamese in the United States are still suffering from the legacy of defeat and the pain of exile.

They are a diverse people whose ranks include former generals and former peasants, spies and schoolteachers, physicians and re-education camp prisoners, fishermen and air traffic controllers. They have brought to America the vitality and the scars, the ambitions and the deep divisions of their homeland.

A few have become millionaires. Many more have earned doctorates, forging a stereotype of economic and intellectual overachievement. Yet this image is largely based on those who fled South Vietnam just before or shortly after Saigon surrendered on April 30, 1975: the nation’s Westernized, highly educated elite.

In fact, most Vietnamese refugees in the United States today live in poverty.

Most arrived after 1978 with significant language, cultural and educational handicaps. Many remain dependent on welfare, stuck in minimum-wage jobs or consigned to an exploitative underground economy. Last year, refugee unemployment was twice the national average.

The gap is glaring in Orange County, home to Little Saigon, the nation’s largest Vietnamese community. Among the 100,000 people who have flocked to the neighborhoods along Bolsa Avenue are such wealthy exiles as former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky--and thousands of refugees on welfare.

Tuong Duy Nguyen, executive director of Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc., a social service agency, said: “Americans drive by Bolsa Avenue, and it’s so thriving, so prosperous, that that’s their image of Vietnamese refugees. It’s not true. Most refugees are still living under the poverty line.”

After 15 years, Vietnamese-Americans of all backgrounds continue to describe themselves as refugees, not immigrants. And many say they are homesick.

“Most of our people have a hidden depression,” said Garden Grove businessman Phong Duc Tran. “We were uprooted suddenly from our country and had to come here. The Koreans, the Japanese, they planned for years to come here; they wanted to come here.

“We didn’t.”

Indeed, the collapse of Saigon, though widely predicted, came much more suddenly than most South Vietnamese dreamed. Of the 1975 arrivals, 61% had less than 24 hours to prepare to leave.

Tales of well-connected South Vietnamese scrambling aboard U.S. helicopters in 1975 with suitcases stuffed with gold are probably exaggerated. Though some did take family jewelry or gold, their only portable asset, many more fled with nothing but their clothes.

What the first refugees did bring, however, was education, class and connections. Sociologists quickly discovered that the 130,000 refugees who fled in 1975 tended to be well-to-do (more than 40%, for example, had owned automobiles in Vietnam) and Westernized. Many had studied abroad or had U.S. friends who helped them get settled.

Most important, the 1975 arrivals were far better educated than their countrymen. Forty-eight percent had university degrees, whereas less than 1% of the Vietnamese population as a whole did. And three-quarters spoke at least some English.

Armed with these advantages--and an outpouring of sympathy from the U.S. public, which has not been sustained--the first Vietnamese adjusted relatively quickly. Though many worked painful stints as janitors and dishwashers, most soon landed middle-class jobs. Men and women worked day and night, shared housing and pooled their earnings. By the early 1980s, federal tax returns show, household income of the 1975 arrivals had equaled the U.S. average. Many of their children were valedictorians.

But such refugees account for roughly one-third of the Vietnamese population now in the United States. The others have less education, less upward mobility and less hope--characteristics that prompted one scholar to compare them to the permanent U.S. underclass.

In California, where more than 40% of Southeast Asian refugees have settled, more than half were still dependent on welfare in 1989.

“There are some tremendous successes, and tremendous failures as well,” said Walter Barnes, chief of refugee and immigration programs for the California Department of Social Services. “In the middle of that lies a bunch of people who are trying to do their best.”

The later arrivals tended to be young, rural people who spoke little English and had few skills of value in the West. For example, a survey of Southeast Asians in San Diego County found that the average 1975 arrival was a high school graduate but that the average 1980 arrival had not completed sixth grade.

These later “boat people” included Vietnamese who saw no reason to flee their Communist countrymen in 1975, then changed their minds; ethnic Chinese who were pushed out of Vietnam by the new regime; young Vietnamese men fleeing conscription into the wars against China and Cambodia; Cambodian survivors of the killing fields, and Laotians, including Hmong and other hill tribes.

They had survived not only war, but often prison camp, persecution, genocide, rape by Thai pirates and the numbing degradation of refugee camps. Nearly half a million entered the United States in 1979-82.

“They arrived en masse, overwhelming existing resettlement programs,” said Ruben G. Rumbaut, professor of sociology at San Diego State University. “And they arrived at the worst possible time--during the highest inflation in memory, followed by the worst recession in 50 years.”

Not surprisingly, the boat people have stayed poorer for longer than the first refugees. In San Diego during the recession of 1983, for example, Rumbaut found that 75% of all Southeast Asian refugees were living below the poverty line, but just 25% of the Vietnamese who arrived in 1975 were.

Today, about 1.2 million Southeast Asians live in the United States, including 250,000 children born here. Most statistics tend to lump them as a group, masking important differences. A closer look, however, shows that post-1978 arrivals--and in some cases their children--are not climbing the economic ladder nearly as fast as their predecessors. After a decade in this country, some are still stuck near the bottom rung.

For example, a 1988 federal survey found that just 35% of all Southeast Asian refugee households were fully self-supporting. The rest were at least partially dependent on welfare, according to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement’s 1989 report to Congress. And the situation is not improving.

“The majority of the new arrivals don’t speak English very well, that’s for sure, and they don’t have marketable skills,” said Tuong Duy Nguyen, who argues that English-language and job-training programs are inadequate and geared to produce only short-term results. “Nearly 100% get entry-level jobs, but they have no hope for promotion because they have no skills. . . . In the long run, these people will definitely go back to the welfare system.”

Contributing to welfare dependency is a rising divorce rate. Though statistics are scanty, one Vietnamese social worker estimates that divorces have tripled, the product of long separations, shifts in traditional sexual roles and more lenient divorce laws. California welfare officials have also noticed an increase in the number of single-parent refugee households.

To be sure, the later arrivals are slowly improving their lot. For example, household income of those who arrived between 1976 and 1979 swelled 46% between 1982 and 1986, to $12,907, IRS returns show. But they still lagged behind the 1975 households, whose 1986 income was $17,861.

“The point to be made . . . is these groups are improving their status at different rates,” said Rumbaut, himself a Cuban refugee and co-author of a new book titled “Immigrant America: A Portrait.”

“The gap widens,” Rumbaut added. “And you can see social class differences not only between ethnic groups, but among them.”

The gap has sparked subtle tensions within the Vietnamese community.

Over lunch in a chic French-style restaurant in Little Saigon, a proud and educated man from an upper-class background complained that the latest refugees are lazy and abuse U.S. generosity.

“When I left in ‘75, I didn’t know what my future was,” said the man, who now owns a flourishing business and drives a Mercedes-Benz. “I just wanted freedom. And I accepted to die at sea. But now the Vietnamese who come here, they know they’ll have welfare, they know they’ll have an easy life. . . . They are not prepared to work.”

The man offered an explanation that is often given by members of the fiercely anti-Communist exile community. The latecomers, he said, have been corrupted by life under the Communists.

Others say the new arrivals have simply been worn down by more than 30 years of war, followed by 15 years of poverty and repression.

Quynh N. Nguyen of Lakewood, a former South Vietnamese navy captain who fled in 1975, blamed the Communists for what he sees as the latecomers’ tendency toward demoralization and dependency.

“I talk to my friends and relatives who came later,” Nguyen said. “They are exhausted, mentally and physically, and do not have the will to live.”

Recent arrivals are aware of such attitudes and resent them.

“The latecomers, they say, ‘Those who came in ‘75, they stick their nose in the air,’ ” said Christine Nguyet Pham, who arrived in 1989 and is a caseworker for Orange County Refugee Community Resources Opportunity Project Inc. The 1975 arrivals, however, note that they worked hard to create the cultural comforts that the later arrivals enjoy: Vietnamese restaurants and markets offering the tastes of home, cafes to relax in, books and newspapers, even Vietnamese-speaking job counselors. And, they note, there were no well-placed relatives to help them get on their feet.

But if the 1975 arrivals seem elitist, some of the latecomers, who tend to have less experience of the West, often have wildly unrealistic attitudes about life in America, according to several recent arrivals from Vietnam.

Many denizens of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, read letters from rich relatives and dream of joining them in a life of ease, said Tien Tat Chu, a former re-education camp inmate who arrived in Huntington Beach in January.

“In Saigon, they say that even the lamppost wants to go to America,” he said.

After years of war and deprivation, Pham said, some recent arrivals want only a chance to enjoy life. She remembered friends promising that when they got to America, they would take ballroom dancing lessons.

“In Vietnam, they have the wrong vision of the lifestyle here,” Pham said in Vietnamese. “They only see what is sent back--money, gifts, technology, abundance. Those in Vietnam only see the enjoyment and not the work.”

Indeed, she said, Vietnamese accustomed to a slower, more social way of life are unprepared for the hustle and bustle of U.S. capitalism, which she called a “work, work, work machine.”

“When they get over here, their relatives work all day and don’t have time to explain to them what it takes to survive here,” Pham added. “And the life here is different--as if you’ve been plopped down from the sky.”

A growing number of scholars argue that the myth of the miraculous Southeast Asian refugee has made life more difficult for the struggling majority. Steven J. Gold, assistant professor of sociology at Whittier College, the scholar who compared the plight of the newly arrived refugees to that of the U.S. underclass, said that stereotypes about Asian immigrants as “model minorities” imply that those who are not instant successes have only themselves to blame--even though Vietnamese refugees tend to be highly motivated.

“It tends to downplay the real problems facing the majority of members of the group,” Gold said.

Kristy Tran, a 19-year-old Golden West College student who arrived in 1979, is one of those struggling. When she was 5, her father was arrested by Communist soldiers. He never returned. At 10, her mother sent her off by boat with two cousins. Now she studies, works and lives in a rented room so she can save money to send back to Vietnam.

“Sometimes I think I’m weak, that I cannot handle the pressure, that I just want to forget the people in Vietnam and my mom,” she said. “But I have to support them. Fifty dollars here can support my mom and my brother for a month. I send them about $600 a year.”

Most Americans, Tran said, think Vietnamese are rich, and some are jealous.

“Sometimes I go to the gas station, and American guy comes up to me and ask me for a dollar because he thinks I have money,” she said. “Americans only base (their attitudes) on the action of one part of the community and judge all of them.”

To some Americans, Vietnamese refugees are living symbols of a humiliating military defeat. Some Orange County combat veterans interviewed recently, for instance, said they resent the presence and affluence of the refugees and are not ashamed to say so.

Vietnamese-Americans are well aware of such sentiments and often feel wounded. In a 1989 Times Orange County Poll of 400 adults, 62% said there is “a lot” or “some” prejudice against Vietnamese people.

A significant minority of Vietnamese said they have never suffered any form of discrimination in America. But those who do encounter it never forget.

UC Irvine student Phong Cao Ta got the cold shoulder on arrival in his first U.S. home--in Alaska. His father, once an education official in South Vietnam, escaped from a re-education camp in 1980 and fled with his son by boat. A U.S. official offered to let them out of refugee camp sooner if they agreed to settle in an area that had few refugees.

“OK, we go (to) Alaska!” Ta remembered his excited father saying. When they arrived, though, the weather was an assault--and people stared at them.

“You are walking down the street and people are yelling names at you,” he said. “You turn around and they laugh.”

The Tas lasted two weeks in Alaska before fleeing south.

Rich or poor, refugees are unanimous in noting that America’s welcome has grown cooler of late. Some say their host country has yanked the red carpet out from under the feet of the very refugees who have suffered the most.

Liem Huu Nguyen, for example, a peasant boy turned successful lawyer, is the stuff refugee myths are made of. But he said he might not have done as well had he arrived in America in 1985 instead of 10 years earlier.

Nguyen, born in a tiny village in Central Vietnam, was once a skinny boy who went to school hungry. “My friends discovered that I never ate lunch,” he said. “In fact, I never ate breakfast.” When he was 12, friends brought him home to dinner, and he asked them why the soup was so delicious.

“They said it had meat in it,” Nguyen said.

His youth and peasant background made him atypical of the 1975 arrivals. His English was poor, and he was unschooled in Western ways; his first contact with U.S. culture had come as a teen-ager, when some passing GIs threw him cigarettes, chewing gum and a Playboy magazine.

Nevertheless, an hour after Saigon surrendered, he climbed aboard one of the last South Vietnamese army helicopters leaving the Can Tho army base. At age 18, he found himself in a strange land, Oklahoma.

But, he says, Americans he met in 1975 bent over backward to help him. He was admitted to Oklahoma State, although his English was still inadequate. Once there, his grades were not good enough to join an international fraternity to which he longed to belong. He went begging to the dean and was invited to join.

“These kinds of opportunities didn’t happen later,” he said.

Nguyen earned a master’s degree, then a degree at the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco and has a private practice in San Jose and Oakland. Many of his clients are young Vietnamese who have run afoul of the law.

These young arrivals, he says, have been given fewer opportunities and received less hospitality from communities that already feel burdened by large Southeast Asian populations.

Nowadays, he said, “America is sick of refugees.”

Beset with budget problems, the federal government has cut back on money for refugees. Where once it paid for 36 months of refugee aid, it now pays for four. Those cutbacks will cost California $135 million in lost federal money this year, said Barnes of the California Department of Social Services.

“It’s becoming much more difficult to deliver full services to refugees,” he said.

Many Vietnamese-Americans said they are deeply grateful for the help. But they think they dare not ask for more.

“The community now is strong enough to help their fellows,” said Xuan Nhi Van Ho, executive director of the Orange County Refugee Community Resources Opportunity Project. “Many Vietnamese community leaders don’t want the government to feel that refugees are a burden on them. . . . If we keep asking for more help, they will cut the refugee quota.”

And Vietnamese worry that they have developed a bad image. Many are mortified by the presence of Southeast Asian youth gangs, which have grown more violent and almost always prey on their own countrymen.

Gangs and crime were cited as the single most serious community problem in the Times survey, named twice as often as problems with jobs or assimilation. Yet in recent interviews, Vietnamese-Americans expressed both shame and anger over what they see as overheated media coverage of the gangs, of welfare fraud, microchip theft and other crimes committed by Asians. And though the recent flood of books and films by Americans about the Vietnam War may be cathartic for Americans, Vietnamese find them distorted and offensive.

“We despise these movies tremendously,” said Duc Au, host of a Vietnamese radio program at UC Irvine. Au said the films show Vietnamese people as prostitutes, faceless enemies or victims of American--never Communist--atrocities.

Vietnamese are never shown as soldiers fighting for their own country alongside the Americans, he said.

In Vietnam, 58,258 U.S. soldiers have been listed as killed. The Vietnamese lost roughly 1.3 million on both sides. The country remains pockmarked with bomb craters and one of the poorest nations in the world.

“If I didn’t know anything about the Vietnam War at all, I would think the Americans did all the dirty work and the Vietnamese were back in the cities having fun,” Au said.

Such images are especially undermining to young Vietnamese, said Thieu Quang Nguyen, 27, a graduate student in computer science at UC Irvine.

“Most of the things associated with the word Vietnam are negative: the Vietnam War, the cheating in Little Saigon, the gangs,” Nguyen said. “And kids grow up hurt inside. They feel ashamed. We need to do something to change that attitude.”

The computer engineer who complained of U.S. racism agreed.

“A lot of young Vietnamese . . . think of their very existence here as part of their defeat,” he said. “And they don’t have any cultural values to be proud of.”

It is another paradox of the Vietnamese experience that the number of Vietnamese dropouts and juvenile delinquents is increasing at the same time that many other young Vietnamese are astounding their teachers with their academic prowess.

Such contradictory realities belie facile stereotypes about Asian students as disciplined super-achievers.

In San Diego in 1986, Rumbaut and his colleagues found that while just 7% of the city’s students were Vietnamese, 23% of the year’s valedictorians and salutatorians were Vietnamese. And Vietnamese-American students had, on average, higher grades than whites.

Yet Vietnamese were dropping out at slightly higher rates than white students, he said.

That pattern is mirrored at Orange County’s Westminster High School, where 52% of the straight-A students are Indochinese. But by 1987, the Vietnamese dropout rate had soared to nearly double the school average, prompting the district to start a special anti-dropout program for them.

Rumbaut found that it was the children who came to the United States without one or both parents who were far more likely to drop out of school or get in trouble with the police.

Likewise, Liem Huu Nguyen, who has represented many youth offenders, said most of his clients are recent arrivals who come from broken families and speak little English.

“Most of them survived traumatic experiences,” he said. “Their parents died in the war, or else they sank on the boats, or a family member died on the boat. They are very young, but they are very bitter about society.

“The kids of the ’75 wave are (doing) OK, even if they are really Americanized,” he added.

Rumbaut found that the best academic performers tended to be Vietnamese youngsters who arrived in the United States before puberty, giving them time to learn idiomatic English and adjust to U.S. schools before their high school years.

Students performed better when their parents tried to preserve their ethnic heritage while adjusting to U.S. life. Furthermore, the more depressed the mother, the lower the grade-point average of the child.

In Vietnam, the pace was slower, the family was larger and everybody helped bring up the children. But in America, refugee parents are working two jobs and coping with myriad problems of their own. Tony Doan, a family counselor, said that when children fail, it is often from neglect.

“Vietnamese people go to work early in the morning and come home late and cook dinner and go to bed and do it again in the morning,” Doan said. “Sometimes weekends. So they don’t have time to take care of their children. And the kids feel lonely.”

Much of the Vietnamese-American experience cannot be explained by the mere facts of background, income or education. What drives many refugees is the immeasurable desire to reconstruct, from the shards of their former identities, lives to be proud of, families that are whole and enduring. Yet they remain in the grip of a deep sorrow, even a bitterness, that is the legacy of a century of war against the French, the Americans and each other.

In a 1984 mental health survey of Vietnamese, almost half reported feelings of depression, anxiety, hopelessness or worthlessness, compared with just one-quarter of Americans. Acute depression was also double the U.S. average.

Time does appear to be healing many of those wounds, the study found. Yet scars linger.

Dr. Ton-That Niem--once a secretary of health in South Vietnam, now a psychiatrist specializing in refugee mental health--said he has treated many refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder. Many were rape victims or had seen relatives killed. Others, particularly middle-age women, complain of insomnia, anxiety, head, stomach and backaches--and a terrible feeling of isolation.

“They say, ‘I came here, I cannot go out. I cannot drive. All my children or grandchildren are gone at work or in class. I am alone in the house. I don’t know what to do. Sometimes by myself behind these closed doors, I feel scared.’

“Then they break into tears and say, ‘Had I known life (would be like this), I would not have come here.’ ”

Niem said Westerners tend to underestimate the pain that Vietnamese, especially elders, feel because of separation from their ancestral homeland and its 4,000-year-old culture.

“We were forced to leave the land that appeared unlivable to us. . . . But our people are very attached to the land,” Niem said.

He sees the founding of many Roman Catholic churches and Buddhist temples by Vietnamese as an important step toward healing. “That is a consolation,” he said. “It relieves their guilt, partially, in leaving their land and ancestors behind.”

There are many other hopeful signs in Little Saigon. On weekends, the shopping district is jammed with families pushing strollers and children who chatter away in English and Vietnamese. Despite their relative poverty, Vietnamese-Americans have the lowest infant mortality rate of any ethnic group in the nation. Researchers cite abstinence from smoking, alcohol and drugs.

Business is booming. There are cultural festivals, classes in Vietnamese for children, more than two dozen newspapers, a $1.2-million senior citizens center being built, a TV station and a vibrant nightclub scene. Most of all, Little Saigon is a place to be Vietnamese in America, yet at ease.

After 15 years of exile, many are also reaching back to Vietnam for solace. A growing number of Vietnamese say in private they support normalization of relations between Washington and Hanoi. Risking the wrath of devoutly anti-Communist fellow exiles, thousands have quietly returned to visit.

During the Tet Festival this February, so many Californians headed for Vietnam that it was impossible to get a seat on a plane, according to a person who made the trek.

Mai Cong, chairman of Vietnamese Community of Orange County and a tireless community activist, said she has not been back, but she has made peace with her memories of home.

“It’s the memory of your childhood, the places where you were raised, where your parents are, where your ancestors are buried,” Cong said. “It’s priceless. It is inside you.”

Staff writers Tony Marcano and Thuan Le contributed to this story.

Vietnamese By The Numbers A Study in Diversity Indochinese refugees, like other Americans, are an extremely diverse group that includes rich and poor, former generals and former peasants, self-sufficient and welfare-dependent, high school dropouts and class valedictorians. Education White dropout rates among Vietnamese youths were higher than for whties, one study found, those who stayed in school had better grades than whites and were more likely to be class valedictorians. Academic Performance Percentage of Vietnamese in San Diego high schools in 1986: 7% Percentage of all valedictorian and salutatorians who were Vietnamese: 23% Drop-Out Rates by Ethnic Group Pacific Islander: 17.1% Latino: 14.1% Cambodian: 13.65 Black: 12.3% Vietnamese: 10.7% White Anglo: 10.0% Chinese, Korean, Japanese: 6.2% Source: Indochinese Health and Adaptation Research Project, 1986 survey of 4,312 graduating seniors in 11 San Diego high schools. Juvenile Delinquents Refugee youths who get into trouble with the police are usually later arrivals who speak little English, have trouble in school and have come to this country without one or both parents, a 1984 examination of San Diego police files showed. Time in U.S. 82% arrived after 1977 18% arrived before 1977 Command of English 61% had a poor command of English 39% spoke some English (None had excellent command of English) Family Structure of Delinquents 41% lived with both parents or step-parents 59% lived without one or both parents (45% of white delinquents lived with both parents or step-parents) Of the 59% who lived without one or both parents: 22% lived with a single parent (43% of whites, 44% of other minorities did) 37% lived with other guardians or foster parents (28% of whites, 15% of other minorities did) Source: IHARP Working on English English proficiency, or lack of it, can say a lot about a refugee’s chances of success in the work force. Only 10% of those who speak no English, for example, have jobs. Labor Force Participation Speaks no English: 10.2% A little English: 29.6% Speaks English well: 54.4% Fluent in English: 58.4% Unemployment Speaks no English: 12.1% A little English: 9l3% Speaks English well: 5.3% Fluent in English: 8.7% Average Weekly Wages Speaks no English: $170 A little English: $205 Speaks English well: $226 Fluent in English: $248 Note: Labor force and unemployment figures refer to all household members 16 years of age and older; average weekly wages refer to surveyed refugees 16 years of age and above who were empolyed. Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1988 Labor Force Participation Refugees who arrived in 1975 got jobs sooner, worked at higher rates and earned more after five years than did later refugees. A small percentage of refugees appear to have withdrawn from the work force altogether. Percentage of Arrivals in the Work Force: 1975 arrivals in work force in 1980: 63% 1980 arrivals in work force in 1985: 56% 1983 arrivals in work force in 1984: 42% Source: U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement Welfare Dependency Welfare dependency is declining, but more than half of all California refugees remain dependent. Refugees on Aid: 1986 64% on aid 36% Self-supporting 1988 54% on aid 46% Self-supporting Source: California Dept. of Social Services and Demographic Research Unit, Dept. of Finance Infant Mortality Though pregnant Southeast Asian refugees recieve prenatal care much later than other women or not at all , they have a far lower infant mortality rate than whites. Researchers cite abstention from alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Vietnamese-Americans have one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates. Infant Deaths Per 1,000 Live Births: Vietnamese: 5.5 Cambodian: 5.8 Japanese: 6.2 Chinese: 6.9 Latino: 7.3 Anglo White: 8.0 American Indian: 9.6 Black: 16.3 Percentage of Women Who Smoked: Vietnamese: 0% Americans: 33%Source: IHARP Legacy of War: Vietnamese in America The Vietnam Exodus 1. In April, 1975, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese flee south as coastal cities surrender. 2. U.S. Marines begin evacuating remaining Americans from Saigon. However, enemy shelling closes Tan Son Nhut Air Base, forcing evacuation by helicopter. 3. Gen. Duong Van Minh surrenders unconditionally on April 30 at 10:24 a.m. By then, more than 100,000 South Vietnamese had already fled. 4. In 1978, Vietnam invades Cambodia, and China invades Vietnam. Vietnam then expels its ethnic Chinese. The exodus of “boat people” begins. Life in the U.S. Most of the refugees who arrived in 1975 hailed from Vietnam’s military, professional and social elite. They account for fewer than one-third of all refugees. Later arrivals tended to be rural, with less education and fewer skills, and have had far more trouble achieving economic self-sufficiency. Average Years of Education: 1975 arrivals: 11.9 1980-83 arrivals: 5.2 White Collar in Asia 1975 arrivals: 79% 1980-83 arrivals: 49% Farmers or Fishermen in Asia 1975 arrivals: 3% 1980-83 arrivals: 38% Living in Poverty in 1982 1975 arrivals: 25% 1980-83 arrivals: 90% Refugee Household Income in ’86 1975 arrivals: $17,861 1980-83 arrivals: $12,907 Average U.S. Household Income in 1986: $17-$18,000 Southeast Asian Refugee Arrivals A total of 918,558 Southeast Asian refugees-567,600 of them Vietnamese-have arrived in the United States since 1975. More than 40% have settled in California. 1975: 130,000 War evacuees 1980: 167,000 Boat People 1989: 37,000 Source: Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (1989), California Dept. of Finance (1990). On Being Vietnamese in America