THE TIMES POLL : Southland Vietnamese Support Renewed Ties

Almost two decades after the fall of Saigon, most Vietnamese refugees and immigrants living in Southern California have made peace with the past, tempering their contempt for communism with support for renewed ties with their ancestral homeland, according to a new Los Angeles Times poll.

This silent majority--for years divided by bullhorn rhetoric and sometimes violent debate about relations with the Vietnamese Communist regime--favors the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Hanoi, and approves of President Clinton’s recent lifting of the 19-year-old trade embargo against the country.

The survey underscores the practical attitudes of Vietnamese immigrants, most of whom believe that their struggling relatives left behind in Southeast Asia could benefit from a thawing in relations between the United States and Vietnam.

More than half of Southern California’s Vietnamese immigrants--54%--support the ending of the trade embargo, which had been imposed on the entire country when South Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975. Younger adults are more likely to have a favorable view of links with old enemies, but support for the embargo’s end is even shared by almost half of their elders. And 54% of those surveyed want to push even further, supporting full diplomatic relations.

The Times telephone poll of 861 Vietnamese residents in Southern California was conducted from March 28 through April 19, roughly two months after Clinton announced that he was ending the embargo. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

“There are many people who don’t dare to stand up to support renewing ties with Vietnam because we’d be called traitors, betrayers,” said Bau Nguyen, a 33-year-old machinist from Garden Grove. “But in reality there has been no nation that has successfully beaten communism. Communism, we have seen, destroys itself. So why not normalize relations with Communist Vietnam and help people inside fight against communism?”

The poll provides a snapshot of life in the immigrant Vietnamese community, showing that most are relatively satisfied with life in Southern California, where they can always find a familiar taste of home in the pho soup shops and coffeehouses of Little Saigon in Westminster.

Still, a surprising one-third of those surveyed said they would forsake the good life in California and return to their native country if the present Communist regime were ousted through bullets or ballots and replaced with a democratic government. The number of older Vietnamese residents wishing to go is even higher, with 47% of those age 50 or older saying they would return to live in Vietnam permanently if a democratic government were in place.

Thang Dao, 56, sums up his wistful view with a Vietnamese expression that is the equivalent of the old saying “home sweet home.”

“We want to go home,” he said, “to swim in our pond. Though clear or murky, the home pond is preferred.”

But by large margins, Vietnamese immigrants view their adopted home here positively, saying they have fared generally well in terms of housing, job opportunities, education and social acceptance. Most say they have been largely undisturbed by prejudice and discrimination, and the largest group says an inadequate command of English remains the biggest hurdle for their success in the United States.

Even brand-new immigrants who have mastered little English and are struggling to survive on low-wage jobs are largely satisfied with the conditions they have found here.

The latest wave of Vietnamese immigrants, those who have come in the last five years, are more likely to have been tugged here by family ties instead of pushed by political repression--a reversal of previous trends. And the poll found that another shift has also taken place: Typically, Vietnamese newcomers arriving here in the last five years are young, unmarried women, as opposed to the military men with families who made up a large part of the first wave of refugees, and the predominantly male second wave of boat people.

“When most people came by boat, 75% of immigrants were men. Women were afraid of the rough boat trip with the pirates and all that. But it’s different now. No one has to go by boat anymore because everyone is flying over through immigrant programs,” said Loc Nguyen, a counselor who sees an even mix of men and women at the refugee center run by the Vietnamese Community of Orange County.

Newcomers are benefiting from the efforts of earlier pioneers who fled Vietnam aboard barges and battleships on April 30, 1975, the date still marked annually in the ethnic enclaves of Westminster and Garden Grove as the “Day of Anguish.”

It is these pioneers--and the bigger wave that followed them out of Vietnam on rickety fishing boats--who have transformed Westminster from a suburban outpost of flower warehouses and strawberry fields into a thriving commercial capital of tea shops, restaurants and gleaming new shopping strips that draw Vietnamese customers from San Jose to San Diego.

Little Saigon bears little resemblance to the crowded and frantic original--which officially discarded its name for Ho Chi Minh City. But it still gives a sense of identity and community to a people who confess they largely don’t know or aren’t sure who their leaders are.

Almost half of those surveyed call Little Saigon the most important center for the Vietnamese community’s business, cultural and social life. And a wider group--70%--considers the area a vital part of their lives.

Van Tran, 29, a new law school graduate and former legislative aide, still feels a wave of nostalgia when he drives past the olive green exit signs for Little Saigon on the San Diego Freeway.

“It meant so much to me to see the word Saigon again,” Tran said. “It’s like finding one’s own identity when one has lost it in Vietnam. As you know, the name Saigon has been wiped out in Vietnam, but here we were able to resurrect it. It’s only in America where this Little Saigon has appeared.”

But there are no markers for the path to political power.

Many of those surveyed revealed that their community is afflicted with a severe leadership vacuum. Asked to name a Vietnamese leader, 88% were stumped. Only 5% picked Tony Lam, a restaurant owner and Westminster city councilman who is thought to be the only Vietnamese American elected official in the country.

Most are relatively unaffected by the infighting and protests that have divided the community’s leaders and groups over the years, ranking factionalism as a problem far behind crime, the economy and other social issues.

It was just a little over a year ago that the head of the Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce sported a bulletproof vest, strolled with armed bodyguards and ignored the insults and curses shouted by demonstrators outside his office.

For publicly supporting renewed ties to Vietnam, chamber President Co Pham received death threats, endured demonstrations and felt the need to take out a full-page advertisement in a Vietnamese language newspaper to deny rumors that he was a Communist sympathizer.

“I hope this survey will prove once and for all that our stance and our visions are correct,” said Pham, a doctor. “To me, now is a time to heal, and not a time to dig into the wounds of the past. And the way to heal is to work toward better relations with Vietnam so that the Vietnamese, abroad and at home, can prosper.

“Now that the U.S. will establish a liaison office in Vietnam,” Pham added, “I want to advise my compatriots that it’s time to wake up and to work together and strengthen our community and not try to break it apart with fruitless protests.”

The passionate rhetoric of Little Saigon protesters and demonstrators is clearly at odds with the moderate views of the majority of Vietnamese immigrants, who generally have gone about the business of surviving instead of competing with the voices magnified by bullhorns.

The U.S. trade embargo had been in place against North Vietnam since 1965, and was extended to cover all of Vietnam when the south was overrun in 1975. For decades, the issue was a divisive one among the leaders and community activists within Little Saigon, who considered it the litmus test of anti-communism.

The Times Poll showed that support for lifting the trade embargo outweighed opposition in every major demographic group, including older Vietnamese, longtime U.S. residents and new immigrants. Almost half of those surveyed said the embargo’s end could promote democracy and human rights in Vietnam, while one in six thought it might have little impact.

“This breathes new life into the country. The people will have more opportunities to get jobs and better lives,” said a 39-year-old Fullerton electronic engineer who asked that he not be identified.

The engineer said he has long maintained silence about his views for fear of alienating Vietnamese veterans, or even worse--inviting insults and accusations.

“If we say what’s in our heart and head, we’d be branded Communist sympathizers. And once you get that reputation, there’s no way you can reverse that belief,” he said.

The engineer reflects the outlook of the younger generation, which typically takes a more tolerant and practical view of the Hanoi regime.

Two-thirds of the younger people polled--along with a majority of the affluent middle class and longtime immigrants who came here almost 15 years ago--favor establishing full diplomatic relations with Hanoi.

But that support has clear limits. Most Vietnamese immigrants say that it will not affect them personally, adding that it is very unlikely they will do business in Vietnam now that the embargo has been lifted. Not surprisingly, their attention is more focused on their life in the United States.

It is a life they consider largely satisfying. They like American culture and many are trying assiduously to fit in by becoming citizens and learning English, and are registering to vote at rates higher than an earlier Times Poll found among their Korean counterparts. Nearly half of those surveyed are citizens, and among those who are not, more than 80% plan to apply for citizenship.

San Diego computer programmer Dung Le said his lifestyle in the United States has turned out to be better than anything he could have dreamed of.

“The worst of days here are better than the best of days there. No matter how bad the economy here is--and it has been pretty bad--nothing will ever compare to the poverty that Vietnamese people face there,” said Le, 27, a naturalized U.S. citizen who fled Vietnam in a boat in the second wave of immigration in the late 1970s.

The worries and concerns of Vietnamese residents are not all that much different from those of other Southern Californians. At the top of their list of community problems is crime and gangs, followed by economic issues. And substantially fewer Vietnamese residents call their personal finances secure today than did all Southern Californians a year ago.

When Denny Dang was a student at the Agriculture Institute of Saigon in the early 1970s, he dreamed of moving here to find immeasurable riches and thien duong --nirvana.

“But when I arrived in America,” said Dang, 44, of Alhambra, “I quickly learned that I dreamed too high, and that was my fault for believing everything I heard.”

Since settling here in 1982 he has held a collection of jobs that included stints with the post office and a health care agency. For the last two months he has been unemployed.

“The thien duong didn’t happen, obviously,” he said, “but there are no regrets. Life here is better than it would have been in Vietnam.”

In fact, a clear majority of the Vietnamese say their lives have turned out better than they had expected when they arrived in the United States.

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll interviewed 861 adult Vietnamese residents of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties by telephone from March 28 through April 19, 1994. The questions were developed in consultation with Duong Pham, a visiting lecturer at UC Irvine and UCLA, and Khao Luu, president of the Assn. of Former Vietnamese Educators Overseas. The interviewing was conducted in Vietnamese and English by Vietnamese American interviewers at Interviewing Services of America Inc. of Van Nuys. A list of Vietnamese surnames was used to draw the samples from phone directories in the six counties. Results were adjusted slightly so that the sample conforms with census information about sex, age and education. Vietnamese residents of Orange County were oversampled and a total of 502 interviews were conducted there; 359 were conducted in the other five counties.

Where Southern California results are cited, the Orange County sample is weighted to its proper proportion in the sample. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample is plus or minus 4 percentage points. For the Orange County sample, the error is plus or minus 5 percentage points; for the rest of the region it is plus or minus 7 points. The sampling error for other subgroups may vary. In addition to sampling error, poll results can be affected by other factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented. Additionally, surname samples of this type do not allow for the sampling of people with unlisted telephone numbers and Vietnamese residents who do not have Vietnamese surnames.

Los Angeles Times Poll: Vietnamese Back Embargo Decision

Although the Vietnamese immigrant community in Southern California still takes a dim view of the Communist government in their homeland, they support President Clinton’s lifting of the trade embargo and the idea that Washington should extend full diplomatic relations to Hanoi. They feel these steps will promote democracy and the economic well-being of the friends and relatives they left behind.

* What is your impression of the current government of Vietnam?

Orange 18-29 30-49 50 and Total County Men Women years years older Favorable 15% 10% 14% 17% 21% 12% 12% Unfavorable 59% 63% 65% 51% 54% 59% 67% Don’t know 26% 27% 21% 32% 25% 29% 21%

*

President Clinton recently lifted the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam. Do you approve or disapprove of Clinton’s decision to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam?

Orange 18-29 30-49 50 and Total County years years older Approve strongly 33% 25% 43% 30% 24% Approve somewhat 21% 21% 21% 20% 24% Disapprove somewhat 7% 11% 7% 8% 6% Disapprove strongly 13% 17% 10% 14% 14% Don’t know 26% 26% 19% 28% 32%

*

Do you think the lifting of the trade embargo against Vietnam will encourage or discourage democracy and human rights in Vietnam or won’t the lifting of the embargo have much effect on that one way or the other?

Orange 18-29 30-49 50 and Total County Men Women years years older Encourage 49% 40% 53% 44% 58% 45% 41% Discourage 13% 15% 12% 14% 10% 14% 15% Not much effect 16% 19% 19% 13% 17% 15% 18% Don’t know 22% 26% 16% 29% 15% 26% 26%

*

Do you think the lifting of the trade embargo will have a positive effect, a negative effect or not much effect on economic conditions for most of the people living in Vietnam?

18-29 30-49 50 and Total Men Women years years older Positive effect 69% 72% 66% 75% 64% 73% Negative effect 6% 6% 6% 6% 6% 7% Not much effect 9% 10% 8% 9% 10% 6% Don’t know 16% 12% 20% 10% 20% 14%

*

Will the lifting of the trade embargo with Vietnam have a positive effect, a negative effect, or not much effect on your life?

18-29 30-49 50 and Total Men Women years years older Positive effect 16% 19% 12% 22% 11% 15% Negative effect 18% 16% 21% 19% 17% 21% Not much effect 57% 57% 56% 49% 62% 56% Don’t know 9% 8% 11% 10% 10% 8%

*

Before the trade embargo was lifted, were you investing money or doing any business in Vietnam? Those saying “no” were asked: Now that the embargo is lifted, what are the chances that you will invest money or do business in Vietnam in the next few years? Percent Already doing business: 2% Likely to do business: 13% Unlikely to do business: 58% Don’t know if will do business: 27% *

Would you approve or disapprove of the United States government establishing full normal diplomatic relations with the current government of Vietnam?

Orange 18-29 30-49 50 and Total County years years older Approve strongly 38% 31% 47% 36% 28% Approve somewhat 15% 12% 20% 12% 16% Disapprove somewhat 8% 10% 7% 8% 8% Disapprove strongly 13% 18% 10% 14% 14% Don’t know 26% 29% 16% 30% 34%

*

Do you think democracy can be achieved in Vietnam by putting the right kinds of pressure on the current regime or will the current regime have to be overthrown and replaced in order to establish democracy?

Orange Total County Right pressure 31% 26% Overthrow 37% 42% Don’t know 32% 32%

*

If the current Vietnamese government fell and democracy was established in Vietnam, would you move to Vietnam to live permanently or would you stay in the U.S.?

18-29 30-49 50 and Total years years older Move back 33% 27% 32% 47% Stay in U.S. 40% 53% 36% 28% Don’t know 27% 20% 32% 25%

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll

Los Angeles Times Poll: Relating to Vietnam (Orange County Edition, A1)

* Do you approve or disapprove of President Clinton’s decision to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam?

Southern California Orange County Approve 54% 46% Disapprove 20% 28% Don’t know 26% 26%

*

Would you approve or disapprove of the United States government establishing full normal diplomatic relations with the current government of Vietnam?

Southern California Orange County Approve 54% 43% Disapprove 20% 28% Don’t know 26% 29%

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll