More Than Just Refugees—A Historical Overview of Vietnamese Professional Immigration to the United States

Abstract

This article seeks to broaden the scholarly literature on contemporary Vietnamese America with the inclusion of new Vietnamese immigrants who have come to the United States as professionals. It illuminates the nuanced ways in which diplomatic educational channels have always enabled privileged Vietnamese to enjoy a US education and gain access to US settlement. It also makes visible the political and social contexts in which the American-bound migration is articulated with the discourse of nation and empire. The article thus argues for a reexamination of the factors shaping contemporary Vietnamese American identity and for the need to place Vietnamese immigration within broader genealogies of Asian migration to the United States.