Anti-Communist Laws in Little Saigon Ignore Realities

Orange County’s Vietnamese community reacted with revulsion last month when a delegation of Communist Party leaders from Vietnam made plans for a motorcade through Little Saigon. Their anger led to city resolutions requiring notice for such official visits.

The Vietnamese representatives visited anyway. Though the motorcade was scrubbed, members of the delegation quietly toured the business district and dined at local cafes.

Local business leaders said this shows the paradox of Little Saigon. Ordinance or no ordinance, Vietnamese officials routinely visit Little Saigon -- touring the shopping district and meeting quietly with business owners.

“The protesters know we do trade and visit Vietnam, but as long as you do it quietly and don’t smear it in their faces, they’re OK with it,” said a Little Saigon businesswoman, who asked not to be identified for fear of community reaction.

“The Vietnamese culture is very sensitive and very complex,” said the woman, who said she has met with Vietnamese government officials in Little Saigon at least twice.

This week, Garden Grove became the first city in the country to pass a resolution to oppose visits to the city by government officials from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Little Saigon straddles Garden Grove and Westminster, where an identical resolution is expected to be adopted Wednesday.

Government officials in Hanoi said the measures could chill relations with the United States. And the State Department said it “regrets” the strongly worded resolution.

In Little Saigon, however, the unanimous approval of the resolution by the Garden Grove City Council was something to cheer about.

It made front-page headlines in three of the largest Vietnamese-language daily newspapers and became the talk of the town from coffee shops to supermarkets and through the night on talk radio.

But Cuong Manh Le, of the Vietnam Consulate in San Francisco, said the ordinances ignore the obvious.

Government officials from Vietnam, he said, often visit Little Saigon -- quietly -- to meet with Vietnamese Americans interested in the rebuilding efforts in their homeland.

Owners of small and medium-size businesses in Little Saigon do business with Vietnamese government officials, host business meetings or travel to Vietnam, Le said.

“They do great business with Vietnam,” Le said.

“When they go to Vietnam, they always say they are going to visit families because they’re afraid people will know their business and it will leak and turn political. Protesters will disrupt business and make hardships, and they want to prevent that.”

Trade between Vietnam and the United States is about $5 billion a year, with much of it originating in or brokered through cities like Westminster and Garden Grove.

Chien Ngoc Bach, spokesman for the Vietnam Embassy in Washington, D.C., said visits last year by Vietnam government officials to the United States reached their highest level since relations between the countries were normalized in 1995.

“Every time they come to visit the West Coast,” Bach said, “they come to Orange County.”

The Little Saigon businesswoman said she doesn’t believe she is betraying the spirit of Little Saigon, where many fled Vietnam rather than live under the Communist regime.

“The protesters have a good cause. The noise they make keeps the identity of the old regime alive. The agonizing and sadness is still there,” she said.

“But on the other hand, life goes on, thanks to America.”

Another prominent Little Saigon business leader called the resolutions “a joke.”

“We shouldn’t fight the Communists,” he said. “It’s time to educate people in our community. If you want to change Vietnam, you have to do it in a mature way.”

The resolution is symbolic, suggested Jeffrey Brody, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton who teaches about the Vietnamese American experience.

He said it is designed to play into the lingering anger the community has toward the Communist regime.

” ... But 29 years after the fall of Saigon, it won’t change the relationships that developed between Vietnam and Little Saigon,” Brody said.

Bruce Broadwater, the mayor of Garden Grove and candidate for county supervisor, said he sees the resolution more as a means of protecting the city from disruptions, such as the demonstrations in 1999 after a Westminster video store owner displayed a picture of Ho Chi Minh and the flag of Communist Vietnam.

Although he knows there is a quiet interchange between the local community and Vietnam, he said public visits, such as the canceled motorcade, would offend many.

“I know a lot of Vietnamese who live in Garden Grove who were in reeducation camps, and they have no desire to go back at all and no desire to have Vietnam government officials parading up and down their streets,” said Broadwater.