Vietnamese Refugees on Track

Two recent surveys of Vietnamese refugees who settled in Orange County offer a window on the state of assimilation in the county on the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

Cal State Fullerton researchers interviewed more than 400 Vietnamese last fall and found that while most enjoyed the freedom of America, many thought there was too much freedom. The extent of that paradoxical feeling was apparent last year in occasionally violent protests outside a Westminster video store where the owner flew the flag of Communist Vietnam and displayed a portrait of Ho Chi Minh. Opponents of the store owner argued he should not be allowed to display the Communist icons.

A separate poll for The Times’ Orange County edition found the same enthusiasm for freedom in America and increasingly hostile feelings for Vietnam’s Communist government. The Times’ poll of 400 people last month and this month also found frequent mail and telephone contact between Vietnamese Americans and their relatives in Vietnam.

Orange County is home to more Vietnamese than anywhere outside Vietnam, many living in Westminster’s Little Saigon. Integration into the larger community has been slow, with but one Vietnamese elected to a City Council so far, Tony Lam in Westminster.

But it is important to remember that the story of the Vietnamese 25 years after the fall of Saigon is not that different from the tale of other refugees from other lands. The Europeans who came to America also took decades to abandon ghettos, win political office, educate their children in their new homeland. Emigres from other Asian lands, as well as Central and South America, also have found life in America daunting.

The importance of Vietnamese-language radio, television and newspapers in this country also was apparent in both surveys. Respondents’ reliance on those media for news is a tribute to the news outlets, some of which have been attacked for airing unpopular reports. Of those people questioned by Cal State Fullerton interviewers, more than half reported voting in 1998, an encouraging sign of awareness of the importance of the American political system.

As the refugees stay here longer and their children grow up Americans by birth, they likewise will play an ever more significant role in Orange County life.