Opinion: New Vietnamese-American generation tackles deportation, poverty, more

Since the arrival of refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975, a contingent of Vietnamese-Americans never missed an opportunity to organize against communism.

However, most Vietnamese-American community leaders have remained largely silent as hundreds of Vietnamese-Americans are being detained, to be deported back to the very country they escaped. In addition, thousands continue to live in poverty or suffer from mental illness at higher rates than the American average.

We want to see change in our community.

Combating communism and retaking Vietnam were the foundation of this refugee and immigrant community. Most of those who led the community had no intention of staying in the U.S. permanently, an assumption that was unspoken but widely understood.

As the community becomes more established, instead of building capacity and resources to address emerging needs, misplaced priorities have resulted in the Vietnamese-American community appearing not to be in solidarity with other immigrant groups and communities of color on a wide range of issues, from police brutality to the housing crisis, from living wages to voting rights.

The latest crisis roiling U.S. immigrant communities is the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants. This also impacts Vietnamese-Americans. More than 8,500 Vietnamese have orders for removal, meaning they could be detained and deported at any time.

The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates there are 116,000 undocumented Vietnamese in the U.S. — but there seems to be a belief that there are no undocumented Vietnamese.

In 2016, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) deported 35 people to Vietnam and, in 2017, according to the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, as many as 95 have been processed for deportation. The number of Vietnamese at risk has tripled.

In the 2015 report titled “A Community of Contrasts,” the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice reported that 43 percent of Vietnamese in California were renters, meaning nearly 1 in 2 was at risk of being evicted and displaced in the current housing crisis; 52 percent spoke limited English, which limited their ability to access legal assistance or services provided by local and state governments if they’re detained by ICE.

The average per capita income for a Vietnamese-American is only $23,073 a year, compared to $42,052 for a white American. In the Bay Area, a family of four with an income of $105,350 a year is considered “low-income.” Based on these numbers, Vietnamese-Americans are an “extremely low-income” community.

They often lack access to affordable housing and mental health resources.

Most reports on demographics lump all Asians together without making distinctions between Chinese and Vietnamese or Indian and Samoan. This reinforces the model-minority stereotype and creates a false perception that Asian-Americans don’t need assistance.

According to a 2008 survey by the UC Irvine Center for Health Care Policy, “21 percent of Vietnamese-Americans report depression and anxiety, compared with 10 percent of whites. Meanwhile, only 20 percent of Vietnamese-Americans have discussed mental health with a professional, compared with 45 percent of whites.”

Most Vietnamese need assistance.

Today, many families are living in fear of being deported. This latent terror drives undocumented Vietnamese immigrants further underground.

We need to keep our families together and allow people a second chance.

Younger generations of Vietnamese, who are sons and daughters of refugees, like those at SEARAC and the activist collective VietUnity, have taken the lead battling draconian immigration policy, and the housing and mental health crises.

The task of constructing a new permanent community and fighting for its members’ rights to citizenship has been picked up by these younger Vietnamese who understand this country’s social and racial complexity.

They see that change is needed in the Vietnamese community.

Thuy Trang Nguyen and Kim Tran are Bay Area’s community members of VietUnity, a Vietnamese-American activist and organizing collective. Sonny Le is a media consultant and a Vietnamese language interpreter. All live in Oakland.