Vietnamese Immigration Families Research Paper
Vietnamese Immigration Families
Nowadays, according to Chris Brown, Codi L. Schale and Johana E. Nilsion which are authors of article “Vietnamese Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Mental Health”, the Vietnamese immigrants’ population to 2006 is 1.1 million people. Therefore they become the fifth largest immigrant community in the United States of America (66). The immigration officially began after the fall in Vietnam War in 1975; the South of Vietnam was taken by the North Communism’s government. A lot of Vietnamese have left the country and came to the United States with the hope that they increasing their living and working condition. They have sought opportunities to full fill their dreams in the golden land where their children can have …show more content…
a good education and better future; their family and themselves can have a good medical care, and they can have a good job to raise the whole family. Nancy Chu and A Renee Leasure, professors of University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, report that in the 1975 first wave contained 132,000 Vietnamese, after 3 years 127,000 Vietnamese came to U.S in the second wave, and the third wave brought Vietnamese to the United States through the “Amera-sian Homecoming Act” in 1987 (105). After that three biggest immigrated wave, most of Vietnamese were brought to the U.S by their relatives who have come to United States. However, under any time, Vietnamese immigration families have to face with many specific difficulties.
First, number one on the difficult list for immigration family is finding a place to settle. In order to develop in a new country, having a house to give cover to a whole family is very essential for immigrants. However, finding a house is very difficult in the United States and it becomes even harder for immigrated family. Everything around them is brand new, from climate to people. Mary C. Water mentions in her book The New Americans, currently, “Vietnamese patterns of settlement” is spreading all over the United States, and “differ in significant ways” (662). That means nowadays, many Vietnamese societies where Vietnamese can gather and communicate are organized almost every state to help new immigrants; however, it still is not easier to settle for the new ones. A lot of Vietnam immigrants and their family seem lost in an entire new environment, and then they will feel more depression when they cannot find a suitable house for their family. Many strenuous works are expected to deal with.
Limited space is the very first concern for a new immigration family. They have to deal with many juristic requirements; moreover, the differences in rules, laws are existed between their Vietnam and the United States. Because of the complexity of justice requirements, immigration family’s members have to spend quite of time to understand and apply the housing rule of the U.S under every circumstance. While waiting for every other thing to be done before they can actually proceed to buy a house or an apartment, they force to find a temporally to live first. Usually, a new Vietnamese immigration family starts with a rent house or apartment, but the most regular method is sharing a room with anyone. To start a better new life, they are willing to accept any difficulties, even a whole family rents a garage to live. A Vietnam family which contains many generations is usually really big, and from five to ten persons live together. All family has to share a small area, and they do not have a personal space for themselves. Limited space not only impacts the private life of family members, but also affects studying of children. In the matter of fact, the article “Asian Youths Join Gangs Because They Feel Culturally Alienated” explains that many Vietnamese children really need a quiet space to study which they cannot have while they live in run-down neighborhoods and inside old, shabby apartments; therefore, it takes a part leading to failure at school which will the beginning of the path to join in gangs, according to counselor in juvenile Mr. Patrick Du Phuoc Long . The consequence is never ever expected by Vietnamese. For those information, on the first time immigrated in the U.S, those Vietnamese people already have a hard ways to go.
The cost of house price is another hindrance for new immigration family. Although the housing prices are already decreased in comparison with ten years ago because of the depression, the costly price of the house still remains as a big issue for immigration. Because of the different value of currency between Vietnam and the United States, it makes a huge difficultness in purchasing a house. For example, one US Dollar equals twenty-one thousand Vietnam Dongs; plus, the new immigrated families have not worked when they first come to U.S. Although there are a lot of house types with different range of prices, finding a suitable house that can fits with their budget is a concern for most of immigration household.
Lacking of neighbor’s information is another obstruction in settling. Everyone wants to live in a good environment neighborhood, especially families having kids; thus, neighbor’s information is very important for Vietnamese family. The immigrated families are very new, and they do not have much detailed information about the place they will live. In lieu of having good information, they easily fall for a scam to buy a house with cheap price, but in a terrible condition house or gang neighborhood. Those bad agencies take advantage of immigrants and lure them to buy a house that native residences will not spend money to try. If people can settle themselves and their families in a good place, they will have a better chance to develop their career. That is the reason why settling is especially important for immigrated families who are coming to the United States to change their previous life.
Second, culture problems are also challenge that every Vietnamese immigration family has to face with.
U.S.A is a country with various kinds of nations in the world. Every nation has their own culture; however, they cannot live well in a society either speaking their own language or using our culture behaviors. Ages is very important component for acculturation, the older people are the harder they can adapt new things. Vietnamese are very conservative in keeping their culture; moreover many, many Vietnamese elders refuse acculturation which will affect a lot on development of the smaller generation in a family. Therefore, Vietnamese immigrant family will have hard times to digest whole acculturation …show more content…
process.
Every single Vietnamese immigration family has to work out is language on the very first days in the United States. For example, Vietnamese cannot communicate with Japanese or Americans by Vietnamese. Therefore, adapting language is a major part of culture challenge for immigrants from non-speaking English countries. First of all, parents must be the first ones knowing English because they are main financial supporter, and guide the whole family, so this is very important that they can use English. Therefore, this part of challenge may be taken easier for teenagers, kids, or young-adults than middle-aged adults, or elderly. Waters also reports that 90 percent of children who came to U.S less than 13 years old speak and use English fluently; on the other hand, only a third of Vietnamese adults who came to the United States at the age 35 and older are fluent in English (666). It needs time to people can adapt it, although most of immigration family prepare for themselves a fund of English before they come to the United States.
The different cuisine also cause to immigrants hard time to get familiar with the new culture. They are born and grown with their home-town dishes, and suddenly, they have to get familiar to new kinds of food. Because of some reason such as lacking of ingredients, or smelling food, immigrated people have to give up their eating style. For example, some Asian dishes are smelly, so they cannot cook in the house or outside of the house. Smell hangs in the air very long which will affect the neighborhoods that are not familiar with that food smell. It is good to live in a country that contains many different kinds of food culture in the world; however, Vietnamese people still prefer their dishes than other. “Không có gì bằng hương vị quê hương” means nothing tastes better than the home food is the most common sentences that Vietnamese immigrant says when they talk about food culture.
Different ways to behave is also a part of culture challenge.
Western and Eastern culture differ from each other. The culture barriers gain the misunderstood between the native and the immigration. For example, kisses and hugs between friends are very common in Western culture, but they are inappropriate Eastern culture. They just do that when they are in a family or lovers. People can easily feel shock. In addition, Imogene C. Brower reveals in his article “Counseling” that Vietnamese people use to call each other by their given name not by their last name like Americans, and Vietnamese women will not take husband’s family name as their family names (646); therefore, Vietnamese people easily gain misunderstanding by calling teachers or elders by their first name, or calling a married woman by her own family names. Natives will feel like they don’t receive any respect. Another example, in the U.S, people do not teach their children in hard way. They almost never hit the children when they make a mistakes or do something wrong. However, Asian families teach their children in a hard way. They punish the kids by hitting on their hands, or on bottoms because they believe that will tame the wild which hides somewhere inside the kids. However, because of the opposing of method, Vietnamese parents will be unintended involving to justice which may report by American
neighbors.
Third, another difficulty for immigration family is creating family financial. Moving to another country equals starting from beginning. Some countries have limited the money or properties that a person can bring when they are out the country. Brown and other authors state that most of newly Vietnamese family income moves in the range from $0 to $100,000 before they pay tax (68). With that limited amount, immigrated families must deal with the financial trouble. The federal government also has some act and reform in other to help the immigrants reduce a little bit of the burden. Michael C. LeMay, the author of the Immigrants mentions “The Immigration Provision of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996” has promulgated, said “For future immigrants: Legal immigrants who arrived in the United States after August 22, 1996 were barred from receiving most low-income federal benefits for five year after their arrival.” (169) In order to making money, finding jobs is the very first start; however it is not easy, especially for new Vietnamese immigrants. The role of father in Vietnamese family is very important. Vietnamese immigrants have to work all kinds of works to make money and create a firm economy’s foundation for their family. Immigrants have to give up their existed career and education. For example, some people have doctor degree in their home town, but the certificate cannot be used in the United States. They have to work another job to have money to pay for school in order to earn back their career, and also support their family such as waiter or even janitor. Finding a job is even harder under the United States’ economic situation. Many owners hire newly Vietnamese immigrants and pay them with the minimum wages because of lack of education and skills. George J. Borjas, the author of Heaven Door, implies newly comers earn 32 percent less than older immigrants and natives. (23) It proves finding a job are getting harder and harder for Vietnamese immigrants. The authors depend on their researches and statistics to show us, “While remarkable 48 percent of other Asian American adults were college graduates and 20 percent also had postgraduate degrees.” (Waters 666) Throughout this specific numbers, the new Vietnamese adults really have tried their best to build a firm career to support their family. The ego of them have to be buried behind and accept any challenges can come to their new life because they are not the only one who face with a rough road also their family depend on them.
Skills are also impact a lot in finding a job for Vietnamese immigrants. Vietnamese people are well known by their good and natty skills. Borjas’s research implies that immigrants still earned 4% higher than natives, although the numbers of immigrants quit and drop-out from colleges and high schools are much bigger than natives do (22). For example, in Vietnamese community in California, called Little Saigon, a lot of nail and beauty salon businesses, home-cooked restaurants, and auto-motor repairing garages have opened and been very successful. However, the author said, the new immigrants have less skills than the older ones; therefore, they will always have low earning (24). Because most of new Vietnamese immigrants esteem graduating college or having bachelor degrees, they forget to improve their skills and talents in case they need to use like immigrating in the United States. Nowadays, majority of natives and old immigrants have owned one, or two bachelor degrees, so competition to finding a job is very difficult for new immigrant family.
Forth, parents try to work to stable family finance, meanwhile kids also try to catch up in school. Within this modern era, education is the most essential element can drive people to success. Parents always promote their children focusing on studying, and it becomes even more necessary for Vietnamese family. Being as a family, everyone has their own duty to complete their life, and all the kids need to do is studying.
The different environment and studying method cause many constraints for immigration student. Although the kids have received a base of education in Vietnam, they will immediately find down that schools are completely different between the United States and Vietnam. The reason is in Vietnam, children have taught to listen more than ask questions in class since they were first time to go to school, so that make students less actively and waiting for instruction from teachers or professors (Brower 647). That way of studying have applied by Vietnamese educators, and it really hard to On the contrary, Long also explain the difference that schooling in the United States requires students more active in class such as making questions; therefore the new alien environment struggle the students and make them feel uncomfortable. Students need about one, two years or even more to get familiar with the new environment.
Moreover, many students believed that they are not treated fairly as an immigrant. In the article “Immigrant Students Are Not Treated Fairly” by Chaiti Sen, the researcher, teacher and writer, confirms that those students cannot go to public colleges and pay tuition as in-state tuition although they live in the state for many years (Gerdes 82). This causes a controversy issue among immigrants not only Vietnamese immigrants. In addition, the author also believes that the development of organizations is used as an equipment to “turn the U.S education system into a network of spies” such as “The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System” (Gerdes 83). They get the immigration students information from to those organization to ensure that they are safe for the United States which is overlap the purpose of them. After the September eleventh, security of the United States becomes stricter. This can be understandable because the consequences of the event are too terrified and hurtful. However, it makes those students feel like they are losing their freedom.
Language once again is a burden for Vietnamese immigration students to go to school in here. To understanding a lesson, the students have to listen and understand the lecture first. A lot of Vietnamese can writes and reads very well, but their speaking and listening is not as good as the others. Communicating by English make them feel more miserable, so they usually try to do school works by themselves and refuse asking the professor. New Vietnamese immigrated students need to put double effort than the old immigrated students or Americans students in order to succeed in classes. However, if we have to make a comparison between other Asian immigrants and Vietnamese immigrants, a very satisfied result will be show. Waters and her co-authors give readers an exact number about the rate of Vietnamese student use English fluently is 60 percent while other Asian is only 40.7 percent (Table 3). This means the situation are improving time after time.
At last, mental problems will be listed as another issue for most of immigrated family’s members. Differences from culture, nation, and racial can cause for Asian immigration family a lot of difficult in order to blend in the society. Comparing to this modern era, the new immigration families have a lot easier and more comfortable start than the old Asian immigration families who came to the United States after the World War II and Vietnam War 1975. However, they still have certain difficulties in specific field of psychology.
Racial discrimination is a sensitive and controversy issue, but it affects a lot on the Vietnamese family mental. Although people, us, are in twenty-first century, there are still a very small amount of people are still having conservative thinking about the different nation in their mind. That is a serious problem which strongly affects and causes difficulties. Living in a neighbor with those kinds of people, it is very hard to get communicate with, so Vietnamese families have to limit themselves in those societies. A lot of consequences will come such as kids do not have friends to play, the time to adapt new language and culture will be extended longer. It is very unfortunately for a Vietnam immigration family to live in that society.
The problems on psychological can express clearly on elder immigrants, especially women. Brown also acknowledges that age is a very important factor that affect to “acculturation speed” and “responsiveness”; moreover, the younger arrival age the easier “adopt” the “values and behaviors” of the Unites States (67). They are too old to start their career from the beginning like their children or grandchildren; moreover, the time for them to adapt a new language is also harder and longer than younger generation. The scholars report women have poor English proficiency when they immigrated to the United States at old age, and they also mention that only 2.4 percent immigrated women rate themselves excellent at speaking English. (Brown 70) Plus, they do not have friends, and they cannot either watch TV or listen to radio because of obstacles in language and culture. Every day, they have to live in a house and cover by four walls which will eventually cause them depression. They do not want to feel bored to have negative thinking, so they help themselves to spend a day with the house-works such as cooking, cleaning or doing laundry. Old people have their limited health, and if they keep cooking or cleaning all day long, they will fall to illness as fast as they cannot image. This is a serious problem which affects not only physical health but also mental health such as home-sick, stresses for all old people. Because of the difficulty, many elder immigrants cannot stand it, and they have to return to their home country. Nevertheless, the mental problems occur not only on elderly but also on the youngest family members who are kids or teenagers. The kids have to go to school to gain knowledge. Some kids have an excellent communication skill, but some kids don’t. They can be shy because they think they are new and different from other kids in the class or school. They may admit that they are bystander or third-wheels in the class. Furthermore, if the kids cannot communicate with their teachers because of shyness or afraid, their study’s results might go down even fail the class. If the parents do not pay attention to their children, the children might get mental illnesses or join in a gang. Having a mental illness just takes times and money to cure, but when the kids join to gangs group is a serious problem. As we all know, once join in a gang group, there is extremely hard to get out. The counselor held a question for those youth “Is it easy to join gangs?” and a very hurtful answer has given “To step in is easy. But to step out, your whole family can be killed.” (Long 1). By only that simple question and answer, the author proves that is extreme dangerous if the children lack in education. The whole living in a new country situation will become worse and worse for immigrated family. Therefore, balanced mental health which requires the works of family members is very necessary.
In sum, although all the difficulties above have expected by Vietnamese immigration family, the numbers of Vietnamese immigrants keep increasing. The benefits from medical field, education, and economy are the main reasons that push the amount of Vietnamese immigrants to go up. Being as a family, all the members have to support each other to pass the difficulties. Generally, not only Vietnamese is looking for a better in the United States but also the other nations; to prove that the data in “Summary Demographic State Data (and Source)” show that immigrant population which made up over 7.5% the national population is 10,436,527 until 2010.
Works Cited
Borjas, George J. Heaven 's Door Immigration Policy and The American Economy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1999.
Brower, Imogene C. “Counseling Vietnamese.” Personnel & Guidance Journal 58.10 (1980): 646. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Brown, Chris, Codi L. Schale, and Johanna E. Nilsson. “Vietnamese Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Mental Health: An Examination Of Age Of Arrival, Length Of Stay, Income, And English Language Proficiency.” Journal of Multicultural Counseling & Development 38.2 (2010): 66-76. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Chu, Nancy, and A. Renee Leasure. “Aging In America: Quality of Life Among Older Vietnamese Women Immigrants.” Journal Of Cultural Diversity 17.3 (2010): 105-109. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Gerdes, Louise I. ed. Immigration. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven P, 2005.
LeMay, Michael C. U.S. immigration: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.
Long, Patrick Du Phuoc, and Laura Ricard. "Asian Youths Join Gangs Because They Feel Culturally Alienated." Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America. Rpt. in What Encourages Gang Behavior? Ed. Tamara L. Roleff. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
"Summary Demographic State Data (and Source)." FAIR: Federation for American Immigration Reform. July 2008. Web.4 Dec. 2012 <http://www.fairus.org/publications/u-s-immigration-and-population-growth-2008>.
Waters, Mary C., Reed Ueda, and Helen B. Marrow. The new Americans: A guide to immigration since 1965. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007.
Nowadays, according to Chris Brown, Codi L. Schale and Johana E. Nilsion which are authors of article “Vietnamese Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Mental Health”, the Vietnamese immigrants’ population to 2006 is 1.1 million people. Therefore they become the fifth largest immigrant community in the United States of America (66). The immigration officially began after the fall in Vietnam War in 1975; the South of Vietnam was taken by the North Communism’s government. A lot of Vietnamese have left the country and came to the United States with the hope that they increasing their living and working condition. They have sought opportunities to full fill their dreams in the golden land where their children can have …show more content…
a good education and better future; their family and themselves can have a good medical care, and they can have a good job to raise the whole family. Nancy Chu and A Renee Leasure, professors of University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, report that in the 1975 first wave contained 132,000 Vietnamese, after 3 years 127,000 Vietnamese came to U.S in the second wave, and the third wave brought Vietnamese to the United States through the “Amera-sian Homecoming Act” in 1987 (105). After that three biggest immigrated wave, most of Vietnamese were brought to the U.S by their relatives who have come to United States. However, under any time, Vietnamese immigration families have to face with many specific difficulties.
First, number one on the difficult list for immigration family is finding a place to settle. In order to develop in a new country, having a house to give cover to a whole family is very essential for immigrants. However, finding a house is very difficult in the United States and it becomes even harder for immigrated family. Everything around them is brand new, from climate to people. Mary C. Water mentions in her book The New Americans, currently, “Vietnamese patterns of settlement” is spreading all over the United States, and “differ in significant ways” (662). That means nowadays, many Vietnamese societies where Vietnamese can gather and communicate are organized almost every state to help new immigrants; however, it still is not easier to settle for the new ones. A lot of Vietnam immigrants and their family seem lost in an entire new environment, and then they will feel more depression when they cannot find a suitable house for their family. Many strenuous works are expected to deal with.
Limited space is the very first concern for a new immigration family. They have to deal with many juristic requirements; moreover, the differences in rules, laws are existed between their Vietnam and the United States. Because of the complexity of justice requirements, immigration family’s members have to spend quite of time to understand and apply the housing rule of the U.S under every circumstance. While waiting for every other thing to be done before they can actually proceed to buy a house or an apartment, they force to find a temporally to live first. Usually, a new Vietnamese immigration family starts with a rent house or apartment, but the most regular method is sharing a room with anyone. To start a better new life, they are willing to accept any difficulties, even a whole family rents a garage to live. A Vietnam family which contains many generations is usually really big, and from five to ten persons live together. All family has to share a small area, and they do not have a personal space for themselves. Limited space not only impacts the private life of family members, but also affects studying of children. In the matter of fact, the article “Asian Youths Join Gangs Because They Feel Culturally Alienated” explains that many Vietnamese children really need a quiet space to study which they cannot have while they live in run-down neighborhoods and inside old, shabby apartments; therefore, it takes a part leading to failure at school which will the beginning of the path to join in gangs, according to counselor in juvenile Mr. Patrick Du Phuoc Long . The consequence is never ever expected by Vietnamese. For those information, on the first time immigrated in the U.S, those Vietnamese people already have a hard ways to go.
The cost of house price is another hindrance for new immigration family. Although the housing prices are already decreased in comparison with ten years ago because of the depression, the costly price of the house still remains as a big issue for immigration. Because of the different value of currency between Vietnam and the United States, it makes a huge difficultness in purchasing a house. For example, one US Dollar equals twenty-one thousand Vietnam Dongs; plus, the new immigrated families have not worked when they first come to U.S. Although there are a lot of house types with different range of prices, finding a suitable house that can fits with their budget is a concern for most of immigration household.
Lacking of neighbor’s information is another obstruction in settling. Everyone wants to live in a good environment neighborhood, especially families having kids; thus, neighbor’s information is very important for Vietnamese family. The immigrated families are very new, and they do not have much detailed information about the place they will live. In lieu of having good information, they easily fall for a scam to buy a house with cheap price, but in a terrible condition house or gang neighborhood. Those bad agencies take advantage of immigrants and lure them to buy a house that native residences will not spend money to try. If people can settle themselves and their families in a good place, they will have a better chance to develop their career. That is the reason why settling is especially important for immigrated families who are coming to the United States to change their previous life.
Second, culture problems are also challenge that every Vietnamese immigration family has to face with.
U.S.A is a country with various kinds of nations in the world. Every nation has their own culture; however, they cannot live well in a society either speaking their own language or using our culture behaviors. Ages is very important component for acculturation, the older people are the harder they can adapt new things. Vietnamese are very conservative in keeping their culture; moreover many, many Vietnamese elders refuse acculturation which will affect a lot on development of the smaller generation in a family. Therefore, Vietnamese immigrant family will have hard times to digest whole acculturation …show more content…
process.
Every single Vietnamese immigration family has to work out is language on the very first days in the United States. For example, Vietnamese cannot communicate with Japanese or Americans by Vietnamese. Therefore, adapting language is a major part of culture challenge for immigrants from non-speaking English countries. First of all, parents must be the first ones knowing English because they are main financial supporter, and guide the whole family, so this is very important that they can use English. Therefore, this part of challenge may be taken easier for teenagers, kids, or young-adults than middle-aged adults, or elderly. Waters also reports that 90 percent of children who came to U.S less than 13 years old speak and use English fluently; on the other hand, only a third of Vietnamese adults who came to the United States at the age 35 and older are fluent in English (666). It needs time to people can adapt it, although most of immigration family prepare for themselves a fund of English before they come to the United States.
The different cuisine also cause to immigrants hard time to get familiar with the new culture. They are born and grown with their home-town dishes, and suddenly, they have to get familiar to new kinds of food. Because of some reason such as lacking of ingredients, or smelling food, immigrated people have to give up their eating style. For example, some Asian dishes are smelly, so they cannot cook in the house or outside of the house. Smell hangs in the air very long which will affect the neighborhoods that are not familiar with that food smell. It is good to live in a country that contains many different kinds of food culture in the world; however, Vietnamese people still prefer their dishes than other. “Không có gì bằng hương vị quê hương” means nothing tastes better than the home food is the most common sentences that Vietnamese immigrant says when they talk about food culture.
Different ways to behave is also a part of culture challenge.
Western and Eastern culture differ from each other. The culture barriers gain the misunderstood between the native and the immigration. For example, kisses and hugs between friends are very common in Western culture, but they are inappropriate Eastern culture. They just do that when they are in a family or lovers. People can easily feel shock. In addition, Imogene C. Brower reveals in his article “Counseling” that Vietnamese people use to call each other by their given name not by their last name like Americans, and Vietnamese women will not take husband’s family name as their family names (646); therefore, Vietnamese people easily gain misunderstanding by calling teachers or elders by their first name, or calling a married woman by her own family names. Natives will feel like they don’t receive any respect. Another example, in the U.S, people do not teach their children in hard way. They almost never hit the children when they make a mistakes or do something wrong. However, Asian families teach their children in a hard way. They punish the kids by hitting on their hands, or on bottoms because they believe that will tame the wild which hides somewhere inside the kids. However, because of the opposing of method, Vietnamese parents will be unintended involving to justice which may report by American
neighbors.
Third, another difficulty for immigration family is creating family financial. Moving to another country equals starting from beginning. Some countries have limited the money or properties that a person can bring when they are out the country. Brown and other authors state that most of newly Vietnamese family income moves in the range from $0 to $100,000 before they pay tax (68). With that limited amount, immigrated families must deal with the financial trouble. The federal government also has some act and reform in other to help the immigrants reduce a little bit of the burden. Michael C. LeMay, the author of the Immigrants mentions “The Immigration Provision of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996” has promulgated, said “For future immigrants: Legal immigrants who arrived in the United States after August 22, 1996 were barred from receiving most low-income federal benefits for five year after their arrival.” (169) In order to making money, finding jobs is the very first start; however it is not easy, especially for new Vietnamese immigrants. The role of father in Vietnamese family is very important. Vietnamese immigrants have to work all kinds of works to make money and create a firm economy’s foundation for their family. Immigrants have to give up their existed career and education. For example, some people have doctor degree in their home town, but the certificate cannot be used in the United States. They have to work another job to have money to pay for school in order to earn back their career, and also support their family such as waiter or even janitor. Finding a job is even harder under the United States’ economic situation. Many owners hire newly Vietnamese immigrants and pay them with the minimum wages because of lack of education and skills. George J. Borjas, the author of Heaven Door, implies newly comers earn 32 percent less than older immigrants and natives. (23) It proves finding a job are getting harder and harder for Vietnamese immigrants. The authors depend on their researches and statistics to show us, “While remarkable 48 percent of other Asian American adults were college graduates and 20 percent also had postgraduate degrees.” (Waters 666) Throughout this specific numbers, the new Vietnamese adults really have tried their best to build a firm career to support their family. The ego of them have to be buried behind and accept any challenges can come to their new life because they are not the only one who face with a rough road also their family depend on them.
Skills are also impact a lot in finding a job for Vietnamese immigrants. Vietnamese people are well known by their good and natty skills. Borjas’s research implies that immigrants still earned 4% higher than natives, although the numbers of immigrants quit and drop-out from colleges and high schools are much bigger than natives do (22). For example, in Vietnamese community in California, called Little Saigon, a lot of nail and beauty salon businesses, home-cooked restaurants, and auto-motor repairing garages have opened and been very successful. However, the author said, the new immigrants have less skills than the older ones; therefore, they will always have low earning (24). Because most of new Vietnamese immigrants esteem graduating college or having bachelor degrees, they forget to improve their skills and talents in case they need to use like immigrating in the United States. Nowadays, majority of natives and old immigrants have owned one, or two bachelor degrees, so competition to finding a job is very difficult for new immigrant family.
Forth, parents try to work to stable family finance, meanwhile kids also try to catch up in school. Within this modern era, education is the most essential element can drive people to success. Parents always promote their children focusing on studying, and it becomes even more necessary for Vietnamese family. Being as a family, everyone has their own duty to complete their life, and all the kids need to do is studying.
The different environment and studying method cause many constraints for immigration student. Although the kids have received a base of education in Vietnam, they will immediately find down that schools are completely different between the United States and Vietnam. The reason is in Vietnam, children have taught to listen more than ask questions in class since they were first time to go to school, so that make students less actively and waiting for instruction from teachers or professors (Brower 647). That way of studying have applied by Vietnamese educators, and it really hard to On the contrary, Long also explain the difference that schooling in the United States requires students more active in class such as making questions; therefore the new alien environment struggle the students and make them feel uncomfortable. Students need about one, two years or even more to get familiar with the new environment.
Moreover, many students believed that they are not treated fairly as an immigrant. In the article “Immigrant Students Are Not Treated Fairly” by Chaiti Sen, the researcher, teacher and writer, confirms that those students cannot go to public colleges and pay tuition as in-state tuition although they live in the state for many years (Gerdes 82). This causes a controversy issue among immigrants not only Vietnamese immigrants. In addition, the author also believes that the development of organizations is used as an equipment to “turn the U.S education system into a network of spies” such as “The Student and Exchange Visitor Information System” (Gerdes 83). They get the immigration students information from to those organization to ensure that they are safe for the United States which is overlap the purpose of them. After the September eleventh, security of the United States becomes stricter. This can be understandable because the consequences of the event are too terrified and hurtful. However, it makes those students feel like they are losing their freedom.
Language once again is a burden for Vietnamese immigration students to go to school in here. To understanding a lesson, the students have to listen and understand the lecture first. A lot of Vietnamese can writes and reads very well, but their speaking and listening is not as good as the others. Communicating by English make them feel more miserable, so they usually try to do school works by themselves and refuse asking the professor. New Vietnamese immigrated students need to put double effort than the old immigrated students or Americans students in order to succeed in classes. However, if we have to make a comparison between other Asian immigrants and Vietnamese immigrants, a very satisfied result will be show. Waters and her co-authors give readers an exact number about the rate of Vietnamese student use English fluently is 60 percent while other Asian is only 40.7 percent (Table 3). This means the situation are improving time after time.
At last, mental problems will be listed as another issue for most of immigrated family’s members. Differences from culture, nation, and racial can cause for Asian immigration family a lot of difficult in order to blend in the society. Comparing to this modern era, the new immigration families have a lot easier and more comfortable start than the old Asian immigration families who came to the United States after the World War II and Vietnam War 1975. However, they still have certain difficulties in specific field of psychology.
Racial discrimination is a sensitive and controversy issue, but it affects a lot on the Vietnamese family mental. Although people, us, are in twenty-first century, there are still a very small amount of people are still having conservative thinking about the different nation in their mind. That is a serious problem which strongly affects and causes difficulties. Living in a neighbor with those kinds of people, it is very hard to get communicate with, so Vietnamese families have to limit themselves in those societies. A lot of consequences will come such as kids do not have friends to play, the time to adapt new language and culture will be extended longer. It is very unfortunately for a Vietnam immigration family to live in that society.
The problems on psychological can express clearly on elder immigrants, especially women. Brown also acknowledges that age is a very important factor that affect to “acculturation speed” and “responsiveness”; moreover, the younger arrival age the easier “adopt” the “values and behaviors” of the Unites States (67). They are too old to start their career from the beginning like their children or grandchildren; moreover, the time for them to adapt a new language is also harder and longer than younger generation. The scholars report women have poor English proficiency when they immigrated to the United States at old age, and they also mention that only 2.4 percent immigrated women rate themselves excellent at speaking English. (Brown 70) Plus, they do not have friends, and they cannot either watch TV or listen to radio because of obstacles in language and culture. Every day, they have to live in a house and cover by four walls which will eventually cause them depression. They do not want to feel bored to have negative thinking, so they help themselves to spend a day with the house-works such as cooking, cleaning or doing laundry. Old people have their limited health, and if they keep cooking or cleaning all day long, they will fall to illness as fast as they cannot image. This is a serious problem which affects not only physical health but also mental health such as home-sick, stresses for all old people. Because of the difficulty, many elder immigrants cannot stand it, and they have to return to their home country. Nevertheless, the mental problems occur not only on elderly but also on the youngest family members who are kids or teenagers. The kids have to go to school to gain knowledge. Some kids have an excellent communication skill, but some kids don’t. They can be shy because they think they are new and different from other kids in the class or school. They may admit that they are bystander or third-wheels in the class. Furthermore, if the kids cannot communicate with their teachers because of shyness or afraid, their study’s results might go down even fail the class. If the parents do not pay attention to their children, the children might get mental illnesses or join in a gang. Having a mental illness just takes times and money to cure, but when the kids join to gangs group is a serious problem. As we all know, once join in a gang group, there is extremely hard to get out. The counselor held a question for those youth “Is it easy to join gangs?” and a very hurtful answer has given “To step in is easy. But to step out, your whole family can be killed.” (Long 1). By only that simple question and answer, the author proves that is extreme dangerous if the children lack in education. The whole living in a new country situation will become worse and worse for immigrated family. Therefore, balanced mental health which requires the works of family members is very necessary.
In sum, although all the difficulties above have expected by Vietnamese immigration family, the numbers of Vietnamese immigrants keep increasing. The benefits from medical field, education, and economy are the main reasons that push the amount of Vietnamese immigrants to go up. Being as a family, all the members have to support each other to pass the difficulties. Generally, not only Vietnamese is looking for a better in the United States but also the other nations; to prove that the data in “Summary Demographic State Data (and Source)” show that immigrant population which made up over 7.5% the national population is 10,436,527 until 2010.
Works Cited
Borjas, George J. Heaven 's Door Immigration Policy and The American Economy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1999.
Brower, Imogene C. “Counseling Vietnamese.” Personnel & Guidance Journal 58.10 (1980): 646. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Brown, Chris, Codi L. Schale, and Johanna E. Nilsson. “Vietnamese Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Mental Health: An Examination Of Age Of Arrival, Length Of Stay, Income, And English Language Proficiency.” Journal of Multicultural Counseling & Development 38.2 (2010): 66-76. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Chu, Nancy, and A. Renee Leasure. “Aging In America: Quality of Life Among Older Vietnamese Women Immigrants.” Journal Of Cultural Diversity 17.3 (2010): 105-109. Academic Search Premier. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
Gerdes, Louise I. ed. Immigration. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven P, 2005.
LeMay, Michael C. U.S. immigration: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004.
Long, Patrick Du Phuoc, and Laura Ricard. "Asian Youths Join Gangs Because They Feel Culturally Alienated." Dream Shattered: Vietnamese Gangs in America. Rpt. in What Encourages Gang Behavior? Ed. Tamara L. Roleff. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2002. At Issue. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
"Summary Demographic State Data (and Source)." FAIR: Federation for American Immigration Reform. July 2008. Web.4 Dec. 2012 <http://www.fairus.org/publications/u-s-immigration-and-population-growth-2008>.
Waters, Mary C., Reed Ueda, and Helen B. Marrow. The new Americans: A guide to immigration since 1965. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007.