Overseas Vietnamese After 50 Years
(1975–2025)

(Part 4)

1. Vietnamese Immigrants Rapidly Adapting to American Culture

Vietnamese immigrants have adapted rapidly to American culture. Below are some of the most important factors that have contributed to their success:

a) Diligence (“Strong work ethic”). Vietnamese immigrants are known for their strong work ethic. They are willing to put in long hours and make sacrifices to achieve their goals. This diligence has helped them succeed in many fields, including business, education, and other professions. Vietnamese work ethics represent a fusion of historical survival instinct, Confucian values, collective solidarity, and professional diligence. This combination has enabled the Vietnamese diaspora to overcome significant adversity and build prosperous new lives in complex environments, reflecting the unyielding spirit of a people who have thrived through hardship and transformation.

b) Strong sense of community.
A strong sense of community has been central to the success of Vietnamese immigrants in the West. Faced with language barriers and the trauma of displacement, they rebuilt a sense of belonging through close-knit networks of family, friends, and local associations. These communities offered emotional support, shared resources, and practical help in finding jobs, housing, and education. Pooling efforts and trust, many immigrants started small businesses that created opportunities for others in turn. Deep respect for education, reinforced by community expectations, helped the younger generation achieve upward mobility and professional success. At the same time, cultural and religious gatherings preserved Vietnamese identity, giving people strength and pride in their roots while adapting to Western life. This combination of solidarity, resilience, and shared values transformed hardship into progress and made the Vietnamese diaspora one of the most successful in the modern world.

c) Love of learning. Young Vietnamese immigrants swiftly adapt to the new environment thanks to their eagerness to learn and the encouragement (sometimes enforced) from their parents’ generation. In general, there is a tradition of valuing education and scholarly achievement, as reflected in the old social classification “scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants” or the saying, “Shunning vast fields for a scholar’s pen.” A notable psychological point is that young Vietnamese often view academic effort as repaying their parents’ sacrifices to secure opportunities for them—a concept less commonly encountered in Western perspectives.

Another prominent factor in the development of the overseas Vietnamese community today is the growing wave of international students who are increasingly numerous and highly educated. According to 2025 statistics, nearly 250,000 Vietnamese are studying abroad—from secondary school to postgraduate levels—including more than 36,000 in the United States, 44,000 in Australia, 43,000 in Japan, 86,000 in South Korea, 17,000 in Canada, and over 11,000 in the United Kingdom.

Compared to previous decades, when studying abroad was still very limited, this movement marks a strong turning point in the intellectual development and global outlook of young Vietnamese. About 70–80% of self-financed students choose to stay and work after graduation, mainly in business, technology, and engineering fields, directly contributing to the emergence of a class of internationally educated professionals within the overseas Vietnamese community.

Having grown up and been educated in Vietnam, these young people often hold perspectives on history and politics that differ significantly from the refugee identity of earlier generations of Vietnamese expatriates. Nevertheless, this new generation—with its bilingual cultural background and global experience—is becoming a driving force in sustaining and advancing the economic and cultural life (and even the population, as a notable number marry members of the “old” overseas Vietnamese community) of the diaspora, while also maintaining strong connections with the homeland through education, research, and international intellectual cooperation.

d) Strong sense of identity. Especially among the parent generation, Vietnamese immigrants take pride in their heritage and culture, wanting to preserve their identity and pass it to their children. This strong sense of identity has helped them maintain cultural traditions while also adapting to American life.

The VNI typing method for Vietnamese on computers was developed by Hồ Thanh Việt in Westminster, while the Vietnamese input on the Unicode Consortium was proposed by an overseas Vietnamese group. Overseas Vietnamese run countless websites, blogs, and YouTube channels. Early publications of the former Republic of Vietnam have been reprinted and now digitized online (e.g., Nam Phong Journal, Tự Lực Văn Đoàn literary works, Bách Khoa magazine).

Video programs like “Paris by Night” and “Asia,” spanning decades, have played major roles in the development of the Vietnamese diaspora by serving as cultural bridges. Their videotapes and DVDs helped maintain connections with homeland culture through folk and pop music, comedy, and fashion shows. Alongside chopsticks and a bottle of fish sauce, these became cultural icons in Vietnamese households worldwide, reflecting the identity of the diaspora and, at least initially, anti-communist sentiments. Even though banned in Vietnam, these productions became popular through underground markets, influencing both overseas and domestic Vietnamese. However, with the Internet and YouTube providing affordable platforms to domestic artists, the influence of Paris by Night and Asia has markedly declined.

More recent examples of this sense of Vietnamese identity from the news:

Dương Nguyệt Ánh, known as “the Bomb Lady,” arrived in the United States as a refugee at age 15, knowing only about 50 English words. In 1976, after waiting in New York while her brother underwent an emergency kidney transplant, she began attending school in Maryland. She recalled, “Most students kept their distance, looking at me with curiosity, but some openly discriminated against me—following, teasing, and using derogatory words. Yet, I held a fierce pride in my Vietnamese heritage, imagining a yellow flag with three red stripes on my back. I vowed to study hard and surpass those who looked down on my people.” Her determination turned into success. Reflecting on her journey in a redent interview with the BBC, she said, “What satisfies me most is that I won the silent war—I overcame those who discriminated against me and despised Vietnamese people, despite the pain it caused my pride. Though poverty and patriotism led me to give up literature for science, I ultimately fell in love with science and have no regrets.” (1)

Amanda Ngọc Nguyễn (born 1991, daughter of boat people), the first Vietnamese American woman in space, shared that she spent weeks learning Vietnamese phrases to greet her homeland, hoping to inspire young girls. “Hello Vietnam! I am flying so young Vietnamese girls can see themselves among the stars. Though I may be the first, I will not be the last,” Amanda said in a video posted to her TikTok on April 17. The video was recorded on April 14 on the New Shepard spacecraft by Blue Origin, the space exploration company founded by Jeff Bezos. She took a few moments to gaze out the cabin window before delivering her nine-second message for Vietnam, filmed with a head-mounted camera. Afterwards, mission control requested she and other crew members go back to their seats for return to Earth. As a bioastronautics research scientist and activist, she brought 169 lotus seeds supplied by the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. It is hoped they will be used to study how space travel affects plant growth.

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, born 1976 in Saigon, is a multidisciplinary artist of Vietnamese origin who received the MacArthur Fellowship in 2025, a prestigious award often called the "genius grant." This award grants $800,000 over five years without any conditions and recognizes individuals with extraordinary creativity, notable achievements, and great potential for future contributions. The selection process involves anonymous nominations and rigorous evaluation by leading experts from various fields of arts, sciences, and humanities.

Nguyen's artistic work explores themes of war trauma, displacement, resistance, and resilience through films, installations, and sculptures. His pieces often blend fact and fiction, engaging with history and supernatural elements to open new understandings of affected communities, especially related to Vietnam and its colonial legacy. The MacArthur Fellowship acknowledges his significant creative impact and his role in advancing deep cultural and artistic dialogues.

e) In addition to these factors, Vietnamese immigrants also benefited from the support of various organizations, including churches, schools, and community groups. These organizations helped Vietnamese immigrants secure jobs, learn English, and adapt to life in America in the decades following 1975.

f) The role of women: Historically, women had greater social roles in Southeast Asia than in China, Japan, or Korea, possibly due to a legacy of matriarchy, in contrast to exclusive patriarchy (Confucianism). The Trưng Sisters, Lady Triệu, and Admiral Bùi Thị Xuân are notable examples in Vietnamese history. According to an International Monetary Fund analysis, Vietnam currently ranks among the highest global rates of women in the workforce. The Vietnam War led to a sharp drop in the male population compared to females, especially among adults. As the economy began to develop after Đổi Mới (“Doi Moi” or Renovation) economic reforms in 1986, the available labor pool was mostly women; as a result, their participation grew. Although many women still work in agriculture, more are entering major service sectors and foreign-invested industries.

For overseas Vietnamese women, in addition to historical tradition, they have taken on roles such as replacing or supporting husbands serving in the military, providing for families during war, raising children while husbands were “re-educated”, organizing escapes, or discreetly conducting business in rationed and restricted economies (kinh tế bao cấp)—thus making them adaptive and resilient.

A typical example is Mrs. Khúc Minh Thơ, founder of the Political Prisoners Association, who lobbied U.S. authorities for the H.O. program that brought former re-education camp prisoners and their families to America. Another is the U.S. nail industry, now worth billions but initially established by Vietnamese women in the late 1970s through the support of American actress Tippi Hedren, who introduced her manicurist to train about 20 wives of Vietnamese officers and officials at a refugee camp near Sacramento.

In science, an outstanding woman is Lưu Lệ Hằng (Jane Luu, b. 1963), the daughter of a former interpreter for the South Vietnamese government, evacuated in April 1975. Jane Luu is an internationally acclaimed astronomer, especially for work on trans-Neptunian objects and the Kuiper Belt, and has received the prestigious Kavli Prize (Norwegian Academy of Science).

g) Thanks to these factors, Vietnamese immigrants have made significant contributions to American society and continue to leave a mark in many fields.

However, early refugees (1975) and later arrivals may experience very different lives and perspectives. Dr. Minh Tường, who left Vietnam in about 1980, wrote in “A Time in Saigon” (1988; republished by the Florida Vietnamese Medical Association in Summer 2022) about his feelings when visiting Little Saigon, California:

“...My friends, who left early, are now successful and proud new American citizens—arrogant, boastful, self-satisfied, having forgotten (or wanting to forget) their ‘old-fashioned’ friends who are ‘too Vietnamese.’ This small group saddens me with an indescribable melancholy. I know these now-arrogant friends left in late April 1975—they never understood or tasted what happened after April that year in the homeland.”

The gap between groups arriving decades apart has only grown. The young who come for marriage or study have not lived through refugee or ‘boat people’ experiences and may not understand the early hardships faced by the diaspora before finding a place among other U.S. ethnicities.

2. Interethnic Marriages

Perhaps the most famous interethnic marriage is that of billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta and founder of Facebook, married to Priscilla Chan, who is of Chinese descent. Her parents, Dennis and Yvonne Chan, were ethnic Chinese Vietnamese boat people from Saigon who escaped in the late 1970s when Yvonne was 12. They settled in Massachusetts, where Priscilla was born and raised in 1985. Her parents did various jobs, like chef and laundromat worker, before opening a restaurant called “Taste of Asia,” later renamed “Pho & I” by the new owner. Priscilla grew up speaking Cantonese, often serving as interpreter for her grandparents, who helped raise her and her two sisters. She had to balance both Chinese and American identities, as a first-generation college student growing up in Quincy, Massachusetts, speaking Cantonese and observing tradition at home while using English and participating in American society outside. The couple met as Harvard undergraduates. Mark Zuckerberg was born in White Plains, NY, to a well-off Reform Jewish family in Dobbs Ferry, NY; his parents were Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist, and Karen Kempner, a psychiatrist, and he has three sisters. Priscilla later graduated as a pediatrician in California; Mark left college to pursue business, becoming one of the world’s richest individuals. (2).

Next is a general discussion of interethnic marriage in the Vietnamese diaspora, excluding cases where Vietnamese women deliberately seek foreign husbands as a means to emigrate.

Among households with a Vietnamese immigrant as the primary householder in America, 91.6% have a Vietnamese spouse, 4% another Asian (inter-Asian), and 4% a white partner. This is the highest rate among Asian groups, a bit higher than Chinese (90%) but much higher than Japanese (66% Japanese spouse, 18.7% white spouse).

Vietnamese men (immigrant or U.S.-born) mostly marry Vietnamese women (92.6%), close to Indians (92.5%), Koreans (90.4%), and Filipinos (85.1%), higher than Japanese (62.8%).

But among Vietnamese women, 84.6% have Vietnamese husbands. Even so, Vietnamese women marrying within-group outnumber their counterparts from other Asian groups, especially Japanese (44.4%), surpassed only by Indians (92.9%).

Yet, when focusing only on couples where *both were U.S.-born or U.S.-raised,* notable differences emerge. Only 59% of men have Vietnamese wives, and just 40.9% of women have Vietnamese husbands (less than Japanese, Chinese, or Indian women, but higher than Filipina (29%) or Korean women (24%)).

Most “US-born + US-raised” Vietnamese women marry “outsiders,” mainly whites (41.3%) or other Asians (12.2%). Thus, more U.S.-born/raised Vietnamese brides marry white Americans than marry Vietnamese men.

Only 38% of U.S.-born Vietnamese brides marry Vietnamese men, while 35% marry white men.

Just 51% of U.S.-born grooms have Vietnamese wives; the data is unclear for those who return to Vietnam for spouses.

In interethnic marriage, the situation is changing rapidly, with more Vietnamese brides marrying outside their ethnicity or nationality. For the U.S., from the first generation (immigrants), through 1.5 generation (born in VN, raised in U.S.), to the second generation (U.S.-born), the rate of marrying within the group declines. Studies from a decade ago show that for U.S.-born men, only just over half marry Vietnamese women, but for women (generation 2), only slightly over a third marry Vietnamese men. This trend will likely increase. For youth, English, American culture, and U.S. education become dominant, overshadowing ethnic, cultural, familial, or parental preferences for “matching backgrounds.” Earlier generations must learn more about the new homeland to connect and get along with their descendants.

A similar trend exists in Australia. A 2006 study there found that 7% of Vietnamese men and 13% of women (first generation) had spouses of different ancestry, but by the second generation, 48% of both men and women had spouses of a different background, mostly Australian or white European.

3. The Countercurrents:

American Vietnam specialist Keith Taylor in *A History of the Vietnamese* (2013) viewed the diaspora as a “countercurrent” that refreshes a historical flow still oriented toward China: “In Vietnam’s experience [from the 15th century till now], a consistent trait has been a fundamentally compliant attitude toward China, enacted by governments patterned after their Chinese counterparts. Another aspect is the state’s tendency to instruct people and weak links to popular aspirations...”

“Yet there are countercurrents of thought running elsewhere—not toward China or the past, but kept alive by the overseas Vietnamese community. Despite an authoritarian regime’s subjugation, injuries inflicted by a faithless ally in 1975, these counterflows live on in dreams of a future Vietnam.”

In the ten years after 1975, most returnees to Vietnam were left-leaning “patriotic intellectuals” from Europe. One was Professor Phạm Đăng Hưng, a South Vietnamese student before 1975 who became a university professor in Belgium, honored repeatedly by scientific bodies and the Belgian government for his contributions. Though initially monitored and distrusted, he greatly contributed to the modernization of higher education in Vietnam, especially in engineering, via international cooperation, high-quality human resource training, and educational innovation, with far-reaching domestic effects. For instance, he founded and coordinated cooperative graduate programs between Belgian and Vietnamese universities, most notably the EMMC (European Master in Mechanics of Construction) at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, and promoted “in-country study abroad,” letting Vietnamese students earn master’s degrees from the University of Liège (Belgium) without leaving Vietnam, saving foreign currency and expanding access to European-standard education.

After Vietnam’s “Doi Moi” reform (1986), there were greater U.S. contributions. One famous and politically controversial case was Henry Nguyễn (Nguyễn Bảo Hoàng), the son of a former South Vietnamese officer and refugee in the U.S. since April 1975, and later son-in-law of Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (2006–2016). A graduate of Harvard College and holder of both an M.D. and MBA, Bảo Hoàng brought many high-profile brands to Vietnam, such as McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Forbes Vietnam, modernizing retail and media, investing in over 45 startups, boosting the innovation ecosystem, heading Timo digital bank, and pioneering Vietnamese fintech. He also founded the Saigon Heat basketball team and co-founded the VBA league, developing sports entertainment, while serving on the governing boards of British University Vietnam and Fulbright University Vietnam.

Conversely, in recent years, Vietnam has engaged more with the diaspora economy. For example, Vietnam Airlines opened direct flights between San Francisco and Saigon. Vinfast had been pushing its electric vehicles into the U.S. market (with little success. As many aging overseas artists return to do business or settle in Vietnam, rising domestic artists perform at U.S. casinos in ever-greater numbers. Technologies like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are increasingly used by Vietnamese at home due to low capital requirements, easy learning (cheap cameras, drones), and notable income for daily vloggers about travel or life in Vietnam. Locals contribute more to online entertainment, news, and Vietnamese diaspora education (cooking or language lessons), generating an unofficial (or informally official) cultural and linguistic current from Vietnam to the wider world.

Still, there remains resistance among refugee Vietnamese toward domestic language innovations, yet the proliferation of Vietnamese YouTube/social media from home and cheap direct phone calls have shaped overseas daily Vietnamese, especially among the older exiles. The spoken Vietnamese from inside and outside is growing closer; Vietnamese in-country now blends in English, while overseas Vietnamese increasingly use words and phrases common in Vietnam owing to the internet’s influence (such as the widespread use of “mình” as a general pronoun, or “chào mọi người” replacing more formal greetings like “quý vị khán thính giả”).

Written Vietnamese overseas will continue to decline due to English, French, and Chinese dominance, and budget cuts have ended Vietnamese-language radio from governments like the UK, France, and the U.S. Even online outlets like BBC Vietnamese, once trusted by several generations, have been scaled back and are no longer based in London, but in Bangkok. Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia’s Vietnamese-language services, once generously funded, were effectively shut down by the Trump administration. However, a federal judge ordered staff back to work.

Free Vietnamese-language newspapers, once common in local Vietnamese businesses, are now fewer, while Vietnamese American YouTube channels multiply. “Dr. Wynn Trần,” a relatively young physician who grew up and earned an architecture degree in Vietnam before immigrating and overcoming many challenges to become a specialized U.S. physician, is now a media presence conveying valuable knowledge once reserved for professionals.

Senior Vietnamese professors at U.S. universities, such as Dr. Phạm Hiếu Liêm (medicine) and Dr. Khương Hữu Lộc (economics), now use YouTube channels to share their expertise in Vietnamese with the diaspora—something unlikely without today’s technology and the evolution of Vietnamese scientific terminology.

Younger, well-credentialed Vietnamese American academics with a fresh look at Vietnamese history and language also participate actively in those online discussions. Columbia associate professor John D. Phan specializes in the historical evolution of the Vietnamese language and its cultural context within East Asia. His groundbreaking work, Lost Tongues of the Red River (Harvard University Asia Center, 2025), redefines the origins of Vietnamese by identifying a now-lost regional dialect of Middle Chinese—“Annamese Middle Chinese”—that once flourished in northern Vietnam’s Red River Delta and profoundly shaped early Vietnamese speech. Phan’s research illuminates how centuries of contact between Sinitic and Vietic languages created a hybrid linguistic identity that challenges modern nationalist narratives (one history, one ethnicity, one language) and reveals premodern Vietnam as a deeply cosmopolitan society.

Oral and visual culture appears to overwhelm written/reading culture, with the Vietnamese globally sharing a common culture to an unprecedented degree.

Meanwhile, the demand for integration and digital information, especially with AI development (artificial intelligence, AI), will see daily Vietnamese writing in both personal and print media increasingly shaped by American tech—Google Translate and generative AI capable of producing new text, video, and music.

In the future, “international Vietnamese” will most likely resemble “International English”—a linguistic bridge among Vietnamese speakers, regardless of birthplace, nationality, or politics, contrasting the historically divided French spoken in Quebec and France.

4. Remittances:

An important point concerning the overseas community is the remittances sent back to Vietnam each year—up to $18 billion in 2022, half from the U.S. (World Bank says $14 billion; State Bank of Vietnam, $16 billion). From 1976 to now, overseas Vietnamese have probably sent some $344 billion back home. (3)

Some mistakenly believe most of these remittances come from overseas laborers (xuất khẩu lao động). However, according to the Vietnamese government itself, in the first half of 2024, about 120,000–140,000 people were sent abroad each year for labor. Currently, about 600,000 overseas Vietnamese laborers remit around $4 billion annually (about $6,600/person). This is substantial compared to the scattered care packages of medicine and clothing sent home a few years after 1975. Given Vietnam’s GDP of $366 billion, remittances now account for about 1/20th of output. In another comparison, annual remittances equal roughly 1/8 to 1/4 of what the U.S. spent per year on the Vietnam War ($152 billion/year at current dollar value, for the war period 1965–1972). As of now—excluding the war in Ukraine—Israel receives the most U.S. aid ($3.8 billion military, $80 million economic). Thus, the diaspora is Vietnam’s largest source of direct “foreign” aid for Vietnam.

5. Conclusion

Mass emigration from Vietnam to the U.S. and elsewhere surged after the Vietnam War ended, beginning with the U.S.-backed evacuation of about 125,000 refugees when Saigon fell on April 30, 1975. As the humanitarian crisis and exodus from Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) grew, more refugees and their families gained entry to Western countries, mainly the U.S.

Specifically in the U.S., the Vietnamese immigrant population has grown dramatically, nearly doubling with each decade from 1980 to 2000 and increasing by 26% in the 2000s. In 2017, over 1.3 million Vietnamese lived in the U.S., representing 3% of the nation’s 44.5 million immigrants and making them the sixth-largest foreign-born group in America. Unlike earlier years, when most Vietnamese admitted were refugees, today most Vietnamese permanent residents enter through family reunification, with few through employment or other channels. Vietnamese immigrants generally have more "limited English proficiency" (“LEP”) than the overall foreign-born population. Still, they naturalize at higher rates and less often fall into poverty or lack health insurance. The presence of over 36,000 international students from Vietnam in the U.S., mostly intending to stay after graduation, is a notable new phenomenon.

Worldwide, with about 100,000 people emigrating annually and growing numbers of women marrying foreigners, creating a new generation of Vietnamese children in Korea, Taiwan, the U.S., Australia, and more, the Vietnamese or Vietnamese-descended global community will see tremendous change and growth.

Over half a century, Vietnam’s story has become one of both roots and dispersion. From a nation of just 49 million in 1975, the combined population of Vietnam and its diaspora is projected to approach 107 million in-country and 10 million overseas by the mid-21st century. This combined figure—about twice the entire 1975 population—reflects a remarkable demographic transformation. It highlights not only Vietnam’s resilience and growth after decades of upheaval but also its continuing links to a large, influential diaspora primarily in developed nations. As Vietnam pursues its ambition to join high-income developed countries over the next two decades, the scale and status of its global diaspora—if it remains invested in its homeland—could be a critical bridge, connecting resources, knowledge, and opportunities for Vietnam while strengthening its international position.

Notes:

(1) https://www.bbc.com/vietnamese/articles/cvg498pznzdo

(2) According to BBC Vietnamese (10/27/21)

(3) According to Professor Nguyen Van Tuan, Australia

Hien V. Ho
May 21, 2023
October 16, 2025