Vietnamese Immigrants in the US

Unlike most of the immigrants from Asia, those from Vietnam came to the United States mainly as refugees and asylum seekers in the 1970’s and 1980’s. In 1980, there were 230,000 Vietnamese immigrants in the US, in 1990 the number more than doubled, to 540,000. The total in 2000 was almost 990,000 and in 2008, it was 1,140,000.

Today, Vietnamese immigrants are the fifth-largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexican, Filipino, Indian, and Chinese immigrants. Over half of Vietnamese immigrants reside in California and Texas, and nearly one-fifth reside in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Vietnamese immigrants make up over 10 percent of the immigrant population in three metropolitan areas: New Orleans metropolitan area, the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, metropolitan area, and the Oklahoma City metropolitan area.

Over one-third of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States arrived in the 1990s. Over half of Vietnamese immigrants residing in the United States in 2008 were women (51.7 percent).

Roughly 40,000 Vietnamese-born permanent residents became naturalized in 2008. In total, three-quarters of Vietnamese immigrants had become naturalized US citizens by 2008, compared to 43 percent among the total immigrant population in the US. In view of this naturalization statistic, it is surprising that 67 percent of Vietnamese immigrants said they spoke English “less than very well”. Perhaps this is due to the traditional modesty found in Asian cultures.

In one study, it said that 3 out of 10 Vietnamese immigrants “lived in poverty”. This meant that their household income was lower than 200% of the poverty guideline set by the US government. To put this in perspective, we also need to mention that 29 percent – almost one third - of native born Americans also “lived in poverty”. And, among the other immigrant groups, the percentage “living in poverty” is 6 percent higher than among the Vietnamese.

Vietnamese immigrants were much more likely than other immigrants to own their own home. In 2008, 70 percent of Vietnamese immigrants owned the home they lived in, compared to 57 percent among all immigrants.

More than one in five Vietnamese immigrants did not have health insurance

in 2008, compared to 13 percent of the native born population in the US.

Q.1. Where do most of the Vietnamese immigrants live in the US?
A.1. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA, metropolitan area has the largest number of Vietnamese immigrants, with 220,000 people or 19 percent. Then comes San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA with 93,000, or 8 percent of the Vietnamese population, and Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX (63,853 people), and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA with 62,420 Vietnamese immigrants.

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Q.2. What is the statistic for college education among Vietnamese immigrants?
A.2. In 2008, 24 percent of Vietnam-born adults aged 25 and older had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 27 percent among all 32 million foreign-born adults and 28 percent of all native-born adults. This is actually quite impressive because there are just a few percentage points separating Vietnamese college-educated immigrants and the college-educated, native born, native-English speaking Americans.