I don't think Kerry should plan on campaigning in Westminister, California. "Little Saigon" to the locals.
Group official: Vietnamese not happy with Kerry
By EDWARD HEGSTROM
Houston Chronicle
Much has been made about Bush and Kerry and Vietnam -- who served, who didn't, and what this means to young Americans, old Americans, Vietnam veterans.
But what about the Vietnamese?
Nearly a million natives of Vietnam now live in America, and many of them have become citizens and voters. Yet no one seems interested in asking them what they think about the issues surrounding Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a Vietnam war veteran who later opposed the war, and President Bush, who avoided service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard.
The older Vietnamese -- the ones who fought alongside American troops in South Vietnam and then fled to America after the communists took over -- pay close attention to American presidential politics, particularly when it comes to their native country.
These Vietnamese vets do not appear to feel much affinity with Kerry the war hero, as some American vets say they do. Unlike other Americans, for whom Vietnam is mostly a memory, some Vietnamese-Americans continue to dream of overthrowing the communist government in their homeland.
Their opinions of Kerry and Bush have been formed by more recent events.
"The Vietnamese people are not happy with Kerry," said Binh Nguyen, who heads the Houston office of the Vietnamese-American Public Affairs Committee, or VPAC. The reason, he and many others say, is House Resolution 2833.
In 2001, the United States House of Representatives, by a vote of 410 to 1, passed a bill that would link U.S. aid to Vietnam to the improvement of human rights conditions in the country. But the bill was blocked in the Senate the following year by Kerry, who was then chair of the subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs.
In a statement at the time, Kerry said he believed it was better to push for human rights through engagement with Vietnam. Not mincing his words, the senator openly took on the Vietnamese then protesting near his office, noting that HR 2833 would "strengthen the hand of the Vietnamese hard-liners who have never wanted the United States involved in Vietnam."
Other American vets of the Vietnam war, including Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, have also called for improving ties with Vietnam. And many foreign policy experts share Kerry's belief that engagement is the best way to bring human rights reforms, economic prosperity and democracy to countries like Vietnam.
But Kerry's position on Vietnam is difficult to reconcile with his position on Cuba, where he supports continuing the trade embargo. And while he criticizes "Vietnamese hard-liners," he courts Cuban hard-liners for his presidential campaign.
Kerry obviously worries about the Cuban vote, but not the Vietnamese vote.
"He thinks we are not an important minority," laments Nguyen. "We'd like to have our perspective known to him, but we haven't had the chance."
The discrepancy between Vietnamese and Cubans cannot be explained by simple demographics. There are more Vietnamese than Cubans in America (988,000 vs. 873,000), but since Cubans have lived in the United States longer, they are likely to have more registered voters.
Cultural and generation differences may be a factor. While older Vietnamese worry most about fighting communism in their homeland, the younger generations are more liberal, according to Andrew Tran, a Vietnamese-American active in the local Democratic party. (Then again, some polls show recently arrived Cubans are more liberal than the first-generation exiles).
But geography offers the best explanation. When the Cubans fled their native island around 1960, they all settled in Miami, a small city they eventually took over. When the Vietnamese exiles arrived 15 years later, the U.S. government forced them to settle throughout the country. The unspoken goal of this costly dispersal program was to avoid the creation of a Vietnamese equivalent of Miami.
The Vietnamese did eventually concentrate in areas like Orange County and San Jose, Calif.; Houston; Seattle and New Orleans. But they have five or six centers as compared to one for the Cubans.
And the Vietnamese happen to have settled mostly in states that are not in play in this election. There are not enough of them in California to keep Kerry from winning there, and their votes don't much matter in Texas, a state Bush will almost certainly take anyway.
The Cubans, on the other hand, have the fortune of living in Florida, likely a swing state. So while magazines like The New Yorker run lengthy analysis pieces about the way Cuban Americans may decide the next election, no one notices the Vietnamese.
Judging by the news magazine covers, it appears the Vietnam War will become a major factor in the upcoming presidential election. But the Vietnamese people will probably be ignored.
Contact Hegstrom at edward.hegstrom@chron.com
This article is: chron.com |
