What Are Social Barriers Faced By Vietnamese Immigrants?

Vietnamese immigrants and refugees are one of the largest Asian groups to migrate into the United States. A large population of Vietnamese American adults continue to struggles surviving and adapting to the American culture due to the lack of social services and communication barriers. The government of the United States provides an insufficient amount of social services for Vietnamese communities. Social services are benefits that are provided from the government to help benefit communities with professional assistance such as healthcare, education, and housing. A major challenge that Vietnamese American adults experience is communication barriers. Vietnamese refugees and immigrants are unfamiliar with English, which makes it difficult for Vietnamese Americans to communicate with one another. Language barriers are broken down into three sub groups, listening barriers, speaking barriers, and writing barriers. The issue of social barriers and lack of social services can be traced back to the first wave of Vietnamese immigration into the United States in the late 1970s. Many of these Vietnamese immigrants fled to the United States to seek refuge from
Scott Vu, a trained case manager who aids individuals by teaching workshops and programs, says that the VNCOC’s strength is “empowering a lot of sick people […] a lot of [these individuals] are low-income and are at poverty level, and we have a lot of services to support that” (Vu). As already mentioned, VNCOC’s CHANGES program offers a highly helpful service to Vietnamese Americans on maintaining bills, such as gas and electricity, through various education