Blogging from Vietnam – Part 3

 
In Ho Chi Minh City, it’s pretty apparent that speaking English is a priority for many Vietnamese. Local bookstores have huge sections of English books as well as English language instruction texts. Many folks (and I’m not talking simply about hotel and tourist industry folks) are wanting and willing to engage in English conversation. I don’t want to overstate this—English is by no means ubiquitous here. But clearly, there’s a segment of the population from local college students to folks on the street who are trying to learn English.

I encountered one young boy—Vinh—who was a shopkeeper’s son playing with his yo-yo. Vinh is almost five, and 3 days a week at his pre-school, he gets English instruction.

Yesterday, a visit to the War Remnants Museum was pretty eye-opening. War is ugly, and that side was highlighted in a stark manner.

Following the U.S. military withdrawal from Vietnam in April 1975, refugee admissions increased markedly overnight. For policy makers, invoking numerical restrictions in the midst of a controversial and devastating war would have been unacceptable; too many understood such inflexibility as morally treacherous and politically high-priced. Consequently, the attorney general on several occasions used the parole authority to permit Asians to enter—the first time it was so employed since the 1965 immigration reforms.

Initially, the U.S. merely wanted to evacuate from Vietnam the approximately 17.600 American dependents and government employees. Immediately before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, however, former employees and others whose lives were threatened were included. These evacuees included approximately 4,000 orphans, 75,000 relatives of American citizens or lawful permanent residents, and 50,000 Vietnamese government employees and officials. Mass confusion permitted many who did not fit these categories to be evacuated. Between April and December 1975, the U.S. thus admitted 130,400 Southeast Asian refugees, 125,000 of whom were Vietnamese. And that was only the beginning.

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