Vietnamese
A refugee family steps off a bus, ca. 1975; courtesy the U.C. Irvine Libraries, Fort Chaffee photographs
Settling in California
The Refugee Act, passed by Congress in 1980 and signed by President Jimmy Carter, broadened the definition of "political refugee" and increased the number eligible for that status. This law was particularly helpful to Vietnamese immigrants who were still living in re-education camps in Vietnam in the early 1980s. Many of them settled in the Orange County towns of Westminster and Garden Grove. The new arrivals were supporters of the American forces in Vietnam and strongly anti-Communist. They had much in common with their conservative neighbors in Orange County, and, unlike most other immigrants to the United States, the majority of Vietnamese joined the Republican Party upon gaining citizenship.
By 2000, the number of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States was well over 800,000. The 2000 Census counted more than 1.2 million people who identified themselves as Vietnamese American. Of those, about 40 percent reside in California, and nearly 135,000 live in Orange County alone.