Vietnamese immigration has occurred in Greater Houston, including Fort Bend County and Harris County, since 1975, after the Vietnam War ended and refugees began coming to the United States.Vu p. 28.

History

1970s through 1990s In early 1975, fewer than 100 ethnic Vietnamese lived in Greater Houston. They included thirty to fifty students, twenty to forty wives of former U.S. servicemen, and some teachers. The first wave of immigration arrived in Houston after the end of the Vietnam War, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30, 1975. Thousands of Vietnamese people who had affiliations to the South Vietnamese government fled Vietnam. The first wave consisted of a higher proportion of managers and professionals and a smaller proportion of blue-collar workers than the average population of Vietnam. Douglas Pike, a historian, said that the people were "urban, upper class, well-educated, and familiar with American lifestyles." Many Vietnamese were flown to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, before being transferred to Houston.

The federal refugee resettlement system established by the Indochinese Assistance and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975, which was active from 1975 to 1988, designated Houston as a major resettling site for Vietnamese.Rodriguez, p. 40. Texas received many Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s because it had a warm climate, an expanding economy, and a location in proximity to the ocean. Vietnamese from fishing and shrimping backgrounds saw Houston as a good settlement point due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico. The first wave, compared to the later two waves, was more highly educated, had more knowledge about American society, and had relatively more capital. Because, at that time, the American population felt "war guilt", the first wave received a more positive reception than the other two waves.

With the Vietnamese immigrant waves after the Vietnam War, the U.S. government provided housing, health care, transportation, welfare assistance, initial education, and job training. Nestor Rodriguez, author of "Hispanic and Asian Immigration Waves in Houston", wrote that the "majority of credit" for successfully resettling Vietnamese and Indochinese in Houston was given to charitable and religious organizations and individuals.41. The tasks the organizations and individuals did included acquainting refugees with the culture of the United States, and assistance in finding jobs and housing for them. Private organizations such as Catholic Charities, Protestant groups and congregations, International Rescue Committee, Jewish groups and congregations, and the YMCA provided assistance to refugees. Sometimes private organizations received assistance from the government.Rodriguez, p. 40-41. In the 1970s thousands of Vietnamese refugees moved to Allen Parkway Village,Swartz, Mimi. "Murder in the Melting Pot." Texas Monthly. Emmis Communications, December 1991. Vol. 19, No. 12. ISSN 0148-7736. START: p. 142. CITED: p. 170. where they encountered crime and tensions with existing black residents. In areas in Greater Houston along the Gulf Coast some white residents had animosity towards Vietnamese fishermen. Around the late 1970s in Seabrook, Texas, a Ku Klux Klan group held an anti-Vietnamese rally, and in an incident two Vietnamese fishing boats were burned.

The second wave consisted of "boat people" who came from 1978 to 1982. They were socioeconomically poorer than the first wave, and their children did not have as high of a performance in academics as the children of the first-wave immigrants had. Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist, said that of the Vietnamese that received Asian surveys, 47% completed the interviews in Vietnamese. Many members of the second wave were Vietnamese of Chinese descent. As of June 2, 1980, the Vietnamese had become a significant ethnic minority in the area. With about 25,000 Vietnamese at that time, Greater Houston had the second highest Vietnamese population in the United States, after Greater Los Angeles."Houston Becoming Burgeoning Vietnamese Society." The New York Times News Service at The Times-News. June 2, 1980. Page 24. Retrieved from Google News (13 of 56) on April 1, 2012. Of the Vietnamese not born in the United States, 11 persons had entered the U.S. before 1950, while 95% of the number of foreign-born Vietnamese had entered the U.S. since 1975. Many of the Vietnamese refugees in Houston had experienced trauma in their journeys to the U.S. and had experienced problems with families and personal issues after settling in the United States. Out of 114 Vietnamese women who were a part of a late 1980s study of refugee women in Houston, the majority reported having problems with family, finances, and/or health and/or reported being depressed, nervous, and/or anxious.

Demand for use of Vietnamese-speaking officers of the Houston Police Department (HPD) increased in the 1980s as the city's Vietnamese population increased.Hanson, Eric. "No failure to communicate with the police / HPD's multilingual officers discover language talents often useful, necessary." Houston Chronicle. Monday, September 29, 1997. p. 13 Metfront. Available from NewsBank, Record Number HSC09291441397. Available online from the Houston Public Library with a library card. "Thong Nguyen, a 13-year HPD veteran, was one of the first Vietnamese officers to join the department, and his language skills were put to work immediately and often. Houston's Vietnamese population was growing in the 1980s, and officers often faced language barriers. Nguyen, assigned to the west side division, soon found that his phone never stopped ringing. 'They called me all the time. In the middle of the night, all the time,' he said. His language skills were in such demand that even though he was fresh out of the academy Nguyen was working on major investigations."

The third wave consisted of former political prisoners and detainees from Vietnam. In 1988 the Vietnamese government began releasing political prisoners and detainees en masse after U.S. government intervention. The political prisoners had mental and physical illnesses due to imprisonment, and they had the most difficult time fitting in to the United States. In 1990 in Greater Houston there were 33,000 ethnic Vietnamese, including those born in the United States and those born abroad. Within the city of Houston, that year there were 18,453 ethnic Vietnamese, with 84% of them being born outside of the United States. As of 1990 the Vietnamese, along with the Chinese, were one of the two largest Asian immigrant groups to Houston,Rodriguez, p. 37-38. with 15,568 Vietnamese living there.Rodriguez, p. 37. Rodriguez wrote that because the Vietnamese started building their institutions in Houston in the 1970s while the Chinese had already been established in Houston, "the Vietnamese in the Houston area have not reached the same level of mainstream incorporation in the late 1990s that the Chinese have."

By December 1991 over 60,000 Vietnamese persons resided in Houston.Swartz, Mimi. "Murder in the Melting Pot." Texas Monthly. Emmis Communications, December 1991. Vol. 19, No. 12. ISSN 0148-7736. START: p. 142. CITED: p. 176.

2000s and beyond The Vietnamese coming into Houston in the 2000s and beyond came to find education and jobs.Klineberg and Wu, p. 39.

In 2005 Houston had 32,000 Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans, making it the second largest Vietnamese American community in the United States of any city after that of San Jose, California.Harkinson, Josh. "Tale of Two Cities." Houston Press. Thursday December 15, 2005. 2. Retrieved on March 17, 2012. In 2006 Greater Houston had around 58,000 Vietnamese and Vietnamese Americans, giving it the third largest such community of all U.S. metropolitan areas.Vu p. 27. By 2007 many Vietnamese Americans in Southern California were moving to Texas to take advantage of lower costs of living.Tran, My-Thuan. "Flocking from SoCal to Houston." Los Angeles Times. December 21, 2007. 1. Retrieved on May 19, 2010.

Around 2008, the Government of Vietnam proposed installing a consulate within Houston. Members of the Vietnamese-American community in Houston protested against the plan, arguing that the current Vietnamese government had a bad human rights record and had no democracy, so the installation of the consulate should not be allowed.Moreno, Jenalia. "Vietnam wants a Houston consulate." Houston Chronicle. Friday June 27, 2008. Retrieved on April 1, 2012. The governments of the U.S. and Vietnam officially agreed to open the Consulate-General of Vietnam in Houston in August 2009, and the consulate held its official inauguration on March 25, 2010."Consul General's Letter to Reader." () Consulate General of Vietnam in Houston. Retrieved on April 1, 2012.

In 2020 a local man named Lê Hoàng Nguyên put up a bilingual English-Vietnamese billboard promoting the Black Lives Matter movement. In response he received death threats. Others decided to start boycotting businesses owned by Lê Hoàng Nguyên. Dan Q. Dao of Texas Monthly wrote that "had instantly become a flashpoint within the community". The sign is in the southwest Houston Chinatown.

Demographics As of the 2010 U.S. Census, Harris County had 80,409 ethnic Vietnamese, making up 28.7% of the Asians in the county. As of the same year, 15% of the Asians in Fort Bend County were of Vietnamese origins, making them the third largest Asian ethnic group in the county.Klineberg and Wu, p. 12.

In 1990 there were 31,056 ethnic Vietnamese in Harris County, making up 28.3% of the county's Asians. By 1990 the Vietnamese became the largest Asian ethnic group in the county. In 2000 the Vietnamese population in the county was 55,489, 28.7% of the Asians in the county. From 2000 to 2010 the Vietnamese population in Harris County grew by 45%.

Geography

As of 2006, the largest concentrations of Vietnamese immigrants and Vietnamese Americans are on the southwest, northwest, and southeast sides of Houston, with the southwest side having the largest concentration and the northwest having the second largest. In Southwest Houston, the major Vietnamese business centers are located on Bellaire Boulevard and the surrounding areas,Vu, p. 29 in the new Houston Chinatown. The area includes hundreds of Vietnamese businesses, including churches, community centers, grocery stores, investor offices, legal offices, medical offices, realtor offices, temples, and Vietnamese restaurants.

Historical Vietnamese business districts include one in the western end of the old Chinatown in East Downtown and one in Midtown. The Midtown one, with 18 square blocks, is located south of Downtown, and between Downtown and Montrose.Swartz, Mimi. "Murder in the Melting Pot." Texas Monthly. Emmis Communications, December 1991. Vol. 19, No. 12. ISSN 0148-7736. START: p. 142. CITED: p. 174.

Of Vietnamese immigrants of the third wave of immigration, as of 2006 many lived in specific multifamily "village" complexes. The complexes include Thai Xuan Village, Da Lat Village, Hue Village, Saigon Village, St. Joseph Village, St. Mary Village, and Thanh Tam Village. Of the larger villages, five are on Broadway Street and Park Place Boulevard in southeast Houston.Vu, p. 28-29

Areas of Vietnamese settlement

The original Vietnamese area in Houston, "Vinatown", was established next to the George R. Brown Convention Center, in proximity to the Old Chinatown.