User:OnBeyondZebrax/sandbox/Vietnamese American

According to the 2010 Census, there are 1,548,449 people who identify themselves as Vietnamese alone or 1,737,433 in combination with other ethnicities, ranking fourth among the Asian American groups. Vietnamese Americans are much more likely to be Christians than Vietnamese who are residing in Vietnam. The history of Vietnamese Americans is a fairly recent one. Prior to 1975, most Vietnamese residing in the United States were wives and children of American servicemen in Vietnam or academia. South Vietnamese refugees initially faced resentment by Americans following the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam War. A second wave of Vietnamese refugees began in 1978 and lasted until the mid-1980s. South Vietnamese &mdash;especially former military officers and government employees&mdash;were sent to Communist "reeducation camps," and about two million people fled Vietnam in small, unsafe, crowded fishing boats. These "boat people" were generally lower on the socioeconomic ladder than those in the first wave.

According to a study by the Manhattan Institute in 2008, Vietnamese Americans are among the most assimilated immigrant groups in the United States. Recently, Vietnamese Americans have exercised considerable political power in Orange County, Silicon Valley, and other areas. Many have won public offices at the local and statewide levels in California and Texas. Vietnamese Americans' income and social class levels are quite diverse. In contrast to Vietnamese refugees who settled in France, but similarly to their counterparts who arrived in Canada and Australia, refugee arrivals in the United States were often of lower socioeconomic standing in their home country and had a more difficult experience in integration due to greater linguistic and cultural barriers. Many Vietnamese Americans are middle class professionals who fled from the increasing power of the Communist Party after the Vietnam War, while others work primarily in blue-collar jobs.

As with other ethnic minority groups in United States, Vietnamese Americans have come into conflict with the larger U.S. population, particularly in how they are perceived and portrayed. There have been degrees of hostility directed toward Vietnamese Americans. Some Vietnamese Americans are racially Eurasians&mdash;persons of European and Asian descent. These Eurasians are descendants of ethnic Vietnamese and French settlers and soldiers and sometimes Hoa during the French colonial period (1883–1945) or during the First Indochina War (1946–1954). Amerasians are descendants of an ethnic Vietnamese parent or a Hoa parent and an American parent, most frequently of White, Black or Hispanic background.