ROUSES_JulyAug2019_Magazine

by David W. Brown Gulf Coast culture has a dynamic richness greater, perhaps, than any other region of the United States, and much of that derives from the long history of enterprising immigrants settling here from every corner of the map. Whether it’s the Italians who somehow found Daphne, Alabama (of all places!), and developed an unlikely yet thriving potato industry in the United States, or the cultural jambalaya that is New Orleans, where every building, festival and restaurant is equally likely to be derived from French, Spanish, Asian or Creole cultures, to deny the astonishing contribution of immigrants to the Gulf Coast is to deny the coast’s very existence. Even the magazine now in your hands would not exist without the family of immigrants who made their way to Louisiana and founded a grocery store chain. In a time of withering debates over walls, it’s good to remember that large-scale immigration isn’t something that ended long ago, during the days of Ellis Island and a few Model T Fords rolling down New York City streets. The United States wasn’t built by immigrants, past tense; rather, it is still being built by them today. About a million people immigrate to the United States every year, and nearly 14 percent of the American population was born in some other country. Immigrants are 30 percent more likely to start a small business than non-immigrants, and own 18 percent of small businesses today. They started a few big ones as well — if you’ve googled something lately, or bought something on eBay, you can thank an immigrant. One group of immigrants in particular has enriched and sustained the Gulf Coastal culture, adding among other things their stunning cuisine, while helping simultaneously to sustain the Southern seafood industry — and, relatively speaking, they just got here . The Vietnamese by far make up the largest Asian population in Louisiana, and are the fourth-largest Asian group in the United States. Over half are first- or second-generation Americans. And if you think that all of this has something to do with the Vietnam War, you are absolutely correct. CONFLICT AND CROSSING OCEANS Vietnam after America’s withdrawal from the conflict was every bit the nightmare of descending forces you might imagine — especially for the South Vietnamese and particularly members of its government. Flaring tensions with China, meanwhile, meant that the Hoa people — ethnically Chinese citizens of Vietnam — were no longer welcome. For 800,000 Vietnamese, after the last U.S. helicopter lifted off from Saigon soil, it was time to leave — and fast. “Boat people,” as many Vietnamese refugees were called, then set sail in one of the largest sea migrations of the 20th century. These desperate people in dire straits rarely received warm welcomes where they traveled. Thousands of Vietnamese attempted to flee via large cargo ships to various nations across Southeast Asia. Refugee camps proliferated. Many countries were ill-equipped to deal with the influx; many others simply didn’t want to. With large ships now being identified and turned away, fishing boats were an obvious option: Vietnam is a coastal country surrounded by water. Refugees attempted to abscond in the dead of night in hopes of slipping surreptitiously into some foreign land. These were journeys fraught with peril, and refugees faced down everything from sharks to pirates to typhoons. Refugee camps grew until they were bursting ANewPlace to Trawl Their Own

at the seams and, eventually, the United Nations convened an inter- national conference to figure out how to handle a situation growing worse by the minute. The conference yielded the Orderly Departure Program. The Vietnamese government allowed expedited expatriation, and the international community accelerated the resettlement process. The idea was to stop these highly dangerous, attempted escapes by boat; between 200,000 and 400,000 Vietnamese perished at sea — it was the very definition of a human rights catastrophe. IN AMERICA Five years after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam, about a quarter- million Vietnamese refugees had been brought to the United States for resettlement. They were processed through military facilities and dispersed across the country. They didn’t have it easy at first — the U.S., a nation of immigrants, has always been a bit schizophrenic on the subject. (Build a wall, but pass the tortillas on Cinco de Mayo.) “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” reads a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty — “…but not in my backyard,” says public opinion. About half of the immigrants ended up in Texas and California. A big percentage found their way to the Gulf Coast. And it was hard. When these poor people weren’t dealing with the triple traumas of surviving an unimaginably brutal war, a swift campaign of oppression by the victors and the hell of frantic escape, those who resettled in the U.S. had new nightmares of dealing with such new monsters as the Ku Klux Klan — a particularly loathsome menace in Galveston, Texas. When the Vietnamese arrived and attempted to take up shrimping — a trade they could actually do without the need to speak English — locals resisted. The Klan militarized and mounted an intimidation campaign that included burning crosses and fishing boats — one fire aimed at eliminating human dignity, the other at eliminating livelihoods. Klansmen in robes patrolled waters in boats of their own. Members of the Vietnamese fishing community eventually worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center to sue the local Klan and won, though the community would have to work hard to rebuild its sense of security, and fishermen their livelihoods. When refugees weren’t facing fear at the point of a gun, they were up against such simple, tiny terrors as having no money and zero social status, not to even mention learning a wholly alien language under difficult conditions. (It is hard to conceive of two languages as different as Vietnamese and English.) Moreover, there wasn’t exactly much of a Vietnamese footprint in the U.S. before the fall of Saigon. (Between the years 1950 and 1974, about 650 Vietnamese, total, immigrated to the United States.) So the refugees could rely only on themselves and on the kindness of strangers. Resettlement continued until as late as the 1990s. All told, about a million Vietnamese have immigrated to the United States. FAMILIAR CLIMES Vietnamese refugees to the Gulf Coast in those tumultuous years of the 1970s and ’80s were drawn in part by a familiar climate and a geography perfect for practicing a common trade at the time: fishing. Louisiana in particular drew large numbers of immigrants be- cause many Vietnamese were Catholic, and Catholic humanitarian The Vietnamese by far make up the largest Asian population in Louisiana, and are the fourth- largest Asian group in the United States. Over half are first- or second-generation Americans.

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JULY•AUGUST 2019