After the fall of Saigon in 1975, many Vietnamese fled their homeland. Over 900,000 refugees arrived in the US from Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1989, most of them from Vietnam, although many had passed through refugee camps and horrifying voyages as boat people. When they first arrived, most Vietnamese refugees were received warmly by different religious and social agencies, although this often isolated them from their country people. More than 30 percent settled in California, with other substantial numbers in Texas, Washington, New York, Minnesota and Massachusetts. Because of their recent arrival, Vietnamese Americans have the largest (90 percent) foreign-born population in the country Many Vietnamese Americans are ethnic minorities in Vietnam, including the Cham, the Khmer, the Montagnards and the Chinese. While the first three groups did not already have significant presence in America, the Chinese Vietnamese could immerse themselves in the established Chinese American communities. With the influx of this population, many Chinatown businesses are now owned by Vietnamese Chinese immigrants.

Despite the cultural impact of Vietnamese Americans, such as Maya Lin, who designed the once-controversial Vietnam War Memorial on the Washington mall, and film-maker Trin T. MinHa, who explored Vietnamese and American women’s identities in her Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (1989), others have struggled to make sense of the rapid and painful adjustments of their displacement. Gang activity portrayed in the 1994 film Bui Dai and in less sympathetic media, is one image of difficulties within the generally “model immigrant” Asian American community The shadow of the Vietnam War also hangs over relations between the US and the changing homeland of Vietnamese Americans, as well as disputes occurring between Vietnamese Americans from historically different regions that became the North and the South. In 1999, for example, when an Orange County (California) Vietnamese videostore-owner put up a picture of Ho Chi Minh in the store, widespread demonstrations and boycotts followed.