Vietnamese Immigrant

I can't imagine growing up without knowing who my father is or what he was. Without my father, my life can not be completed. I am very fortunate that I have the best of two worlds and that I have a chance to be loved by both my mother and my father.

Most Vietnamese Amerasians do not have this life opportunity to be loved by both parents. Their lives will never be complete because they are the "children of the dust". This term is used to describe the wandering life of Amerasian children. Their lives are described as "dust" because they are ever flowing with the wind dust, which has neither beginning nor ending. (I will use the terms Vietnamese-Amerasians and Amerasians interchangeably. Although Amerasians is a board term that can include Korean and Philippines, in this paper Amerasians only denote Vietnamese-Amerasians.) In the case of Vietnamese Amerasians, the children wander and their lives flow freely in their own country. In Vietnam, they search for a place that they can belong to. In America, they continue to do the same thing--searching for a place that they can call their own after being deserted in Vietnam.

(Minh Ha, left, and Anh Dung in Utica New York. Two Amerasians's lives traced in Thomas Bass's Vietnamerica book.)

After watching the documentary video, "From Hollywood to Hanoi", produced by Tiana Nguyen, a Californian Vietnamese-American, I was mesmerized by the fact that there were so many Vietnamese-Amerasians still in Vietnam. My question was, why this is so and what is behind on all this? What race and country do the Vietnamese-Amerasians belong to? Is the Vietnamese or is the American society their true home? Or is there a society that exists for them to fit in?

In addition to my questions, I came to a realization that there might be a possible scrutiny in both the political decisions of the Vietnamese and the United States government on Vietnamese-Amerasians issues. This realization carried another set of questions for me. Who are the Vietnamese-Amerasians really? Are they really Vietnamese?

Or are they fully Americans? How do they identify themselves? How do both the Vietnamese and American societies see them? In this paper, first, I will trace the experiences of the Amerasians in Vietnam, their trip to America and finally their difficulties and problems adjusting to mainstream society.

There were many factors that could influence the changes in relations between the United States and Vietnam after the Vietnam War. In the beginning, the U.S. showed their insensitivity toward the Amerasians through the Operation Baby Lift. However, after much public criticism of the U.S. government, they eventually became more responsible regarding there past military services. They implemented programs like the Orderly Departure Program and the Amerasians Act in attempting to bring their "forgotten" son and daughters back home.

These new immigration laws opened pathways between Vietnam and America, and allowed Amerasians to come to America. But once they arrived in this country, they encountered many unwanted realities that broke their American dreams. They dreamt that they would find their fathers and that their fathers would accept them with wide-open arms. They dreamt that there would be less discrimination and more acceptances in both the mainstream America and Vietnamese communities in America. Instead of believing in their American dreams, they woke up after learning that their fathers do not want them to be part of their lives. And when their Vietnamese family cast aside from them when they lost their value as "tickets" to America. They became, once more, a marginalized group in what was supposed to be their second home.

In America, the Vietnamese-Amerasians do not feel better than they felt in Vietnam. They had no identity. Actually, they never had the chance to identity themselves with a specific race. They did not blend in mainstream America because of the minimal education they received in Vietnam and the Philippines. In Vietnam, they were Amerasians, but in America, they were Vietnamese. The same way as in Vietnam, Amerasians have no place to go in this world.

The 1960s intervention of the United States in Vietnam did not just prove to the whole world that the U.S. foreign policy was ineffective but also that it was a failure. Along with this failure, they brought home with them an embarrassed case of moral. During the Vietnam War, United States servicemen from all military branches, such as the Army, the Marine, and the Navy, failed their promise at helping to defend and contain the spread of communism in Vietnam. Also, they failed in keeping their military duty professional. In rare cases, they fell in love. In most cases, they lusted for the enemy's women. They fathered many children. And eventually, as their duty came to a close, they abandoned both their "lovers" and children upon returning to the United States. The servicemen were cruel and insensitive lovers. They took no responsibility as a father. To make things sadder, the United States government never admitted that it was their "men's" faults. Rather they indirectly tolerated these actions and figured that their "men" could enjoy some leisure activities while on duty.

Of what had happened, there was a question of love and lust for most U.S. servicemen. And it was a question of tradition and betrayal for the Vietnamese women. The War gave many Vietnamese women the chance to break away and liberate themselves. For the first time, they took on employment opportunity outside their family and home. In fact, most women traveled many miles to get out of their rural farming home to the city military base, like Vung Tau, to take on service jobs as "cashiers, waitresses, and maids" (Bass, 14). In some unusual case, some women took on jobs as "bar girls and prostitutes" (Lipman, 17). The latter broke up the traditional Vietnamese women in them. Later, this also made it difficult for Amerasians because of the mothers' "betrayal of nationalism and traditional feminine chastity" (Lipman, 11).

Most of the American servicemen left Vietnam gradually before the fall of Saigon in April 1975. When they left, they left alone. Because of this, most of the pregnant Vietnamese girls later became single mothers. They, too, were alone. Their family disowned almost all of them because they disappointed the family. The family trusted in them when they were sent to the city to get higher paying jobs to help ease the family economic burden. Instead of bringing back income to help, the girls