Background:

In 1965, the United States officially entered the Vietnam War with the goal of preventing the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Communism is a type of government that believes in publicly-owned goods. It is in direct opposition to American ideals of democracy and capitalism. The Vietnam War (1955-1975) ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975 when the communist North Vietnamese armies took over the south. The war resulted in mass displacement, death, and destruction in not just Vietnam, but neighboring countries such as Laos and Cambodia.

Essay:

Because of its involvement in the Vietnam War (1955-1975), the United States had a responsibility to assist in the post-war efforts. As such, approximately 1.1 million Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, and Laotian refugees arrived in the United States over the next three decades. As refugees arrived, their assimilation and education in the United States, especially their ability to learn and speak English, became a prominent issue.

Southeast Asian refugees came to the United States in many waves starting in 1975 and ending in 2005. Vietnamese elites – such as those who worked in government and the military — arrived first. They were known as the first wave of Southeast Asian refugees. They tended to be highly educated.

After this first wave, the United States passed laws to allow for more refugees to enter the country. Refugees from all backgrounds within Vietnam, and then from Cambodia and Laos, were able to immigrate. This resulted in the second wave of Southeast Asian refugees. These refugees were from more rural areas and had less opportunities to be educated. Part of this second wave included Vietnamese boat people. These refugees were forced to flee Vietnam in small cramped boats. They faced many dangers and many perished at sea.

The United States did not have a refugee resettlement program in place before many of the Southeast Asian refugees arrived, so they relied on sponsors in the form of churches, American families, former refugees, and businesses to help with resettlement. Refugees were sent to live under these sponsorships and were spread out across the country. This encouraged rapid assimilation. It also helped prevent any one community or state from being financially burdened by a big influx of refugees.

In practice, spreading out the refugees added to the disconnection, isolation, and trauma that many refugees experienced during resettlement. Large groups of refugees moved again to places with big concentrations of refugee populations and/or based on connections they made with others in the refugee camps.

The first wave of refugees had an easier time adjusting to living in the United States than the later waves. The main reason for this was that most of the first wave refugees knew how to speak English. They had been educated and had worked with U.S. officials during the war. They had skills that were considered useful in the United States. The refugees who arrived in later waves had limited English and professional skills. They required more support in adjusting to life in the United States.

The United States was not prepared for the task of teaching refugee students. The refugees’ first instruction was done in the U.S. refugee camps. For example, in 1975 at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas, the 13,325 Vietnamese in the refugee camp were taught “Survival English.” This was a common practice. The refugees learned just enough English to answer some basic questions and get by.

Children couldn’t leave these base-turned-camps to attend the public schools nearby. And so children and parents were taught at the same time. The refugees were also encouraged to watch tape-recorded English lessons, television programs, and commercials to learn English. As families were resettled in various cities, their children started to attend local public schools.

The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 meant that some schools were able to create bilingual education programs for their refugee students through funding received from the federal government. For example, in Chicago Public Schools in the 1980s, there were over 150 schools with bilingual programs, and Vietnamese was among the top five languages being taught at the time. (Southeast Asian refugees were the first large immigrant population to benefit from bilingual programs in the United States.)

But overall, bilingual education was still a new concept at this time in the United States. As such, bilingual teaching materials and resources were very scarce for the new Southeast Asian refugee students who had little to no English proficiency. In addition, the second wave of refugees also had limited proficiency in their own native languages. This meant that they struggled with transferring reading and writing skills from one language to another. In addition, Southeast Asian refugee students were often in classrooms where the teacher did not speak the same language as them and the class was taught all in English.

However, this was not the experience of all refugees learning to speak English in the United States. When refugees from Cuba arrived in the United States in growing numbers after 1959, they faced the same challenge of needing to learn English. As a result, the first publicly-funded bilingual education program emerged in 1963 in Florida at Coral Way Elementary. Like Fort Chaffee, the district didn’t have Spanish materials or teachers trained in second-language techniques. However, they received funding to create a pilot bilingual school that opened in less than a year. To find bilingual teachers, the district recruited and sent sixty Cuban refugees to be trained as teachers at the University of Miami. By the end of the first year, Cuban refugee children learned English well enough to communicate effectively, and performed as well as students in regular schools within five years.

Programs like the bilingual education program in Florida recognized the value of speaking multiple languages. This was a significant step away from English-only sentiments that treated the speaking of another language as disloyal or useless. Yet, despite the success of the bilingual program at Coral Way Elementary, bilingual education programs were not similarly invested in for Southeast Asian refugees. And so, only those students who were able to acquire proficient English skills were able to succeed.

English skills impacted job opportunities. Those with limited English skills could only obtain low-wage jobs. In addition, many Southeast Asian refugees faced racism as a result of anti-immigrant sentiments. Like with other Asian groups, Southeast Asian refugees were subject to the “Perpetual Foreigner” stereotype which positioned them as “outsiders” and “foreigners.” As refugees, these new immigrants faced post-war trauma, language barriers, culture shock, and discrimination. Some Southeast Asian American youth turned to gangs for support.

Southeast Asian refugees were also affected by the “Model Minority” stereotype. This stereotype painted all Asian Americans as achieving with little support when it came to education and employment. Over-reporting in news stories of the high achievement of some Vietnamese students also added to this assumption that all Asian Americans were doing well and didn’t require any additional support or help. Yet this wasn’t true for many of the refugees who were displaced and deeply traumatized by war. The Model Minority stereotype is dangerous because it serves as a racial wedge and also hides issues faced by different subgroups by painting the entire community as highly successful. It also prevents groups, like Southeast Asian refugees, from getting the assistance programs and funding they need. This lack of investment and support impacts Southeast Asian communities to this day, as they continue to have lower educational attainment, employment, English-language proficiency, and health access rates than both the general population and other Asian Americans.