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Vietnamese Australians

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Vietnamese Australian refers to citizens or residents of Australia who are ethnically Vietnamese. Communities of Overseas Vietnamese are referred to as Việt Kiều.

History in Australia

Up until 1975, there were less than 2,000 Vietnam-born people in Australia. Following the take over of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese communist government in April 1975, Australia, being a signatory to the UNHCR, agreed to resettle its share of Vietnam-born refugees under a refugee resettlement plan between 1975 and 1985. Over 90,000 refugees were processed and entered Australia during this time.

By the 1990s, the number of Vietnam-born migrating to Australia had surpassed the number entering as refugees. From 1991-93, the percentage of Vietnam-born migrants had reached 77 per cent of the total intake of Vietnam-born arriving in Australia, and by 2000, the percentage of Vietnam-born migrants had climbed to 98 per cent. In 2001-2002, 1,919 Vietnam-born migrants and 44 humanitarian entrants settled in Australia. Even though the number of Vietnam-born entering Australia has reduced, it is likely that Vietnamese migration to Australia will continue at a steady flow.

Vietnamese Australians in Australian society

Vietnamese Australians vary widely in income and social class levels. Many Vietnamese Australians are professionals who fled from the increasing power of the Communist Party after the Vietnam War, while others work primarily in blue-collar jobs. Australian raised and born Vietnamese Australians are highly represented in Australian universities and many professions (particuarly as information technology workers, engineers and pharmacists), while other members in the community are subject to high unemployment rates.[citation needed]

Vietnamese Australians have an exceptionally low rate of return migration to Vietnam. In December 2001, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated that there were 3,950 Australian citizens resident in Vietnam. It is not clear what proportion of this number are returned emigrants with Australian citizenship or their Vietnamese Australian children, and what number is simply other Australians in Vietnam for business or other reasons. The greater proportion (3,000) were recorded in the south of the country.

Demographics

Population

Vietnamese Australians are the eleventh largest ethnic group in Australia, numbering 156,581 or 0.8 per cent of respondents in the 2001 Census.

The census recorded 154,830 Vietnam-born persons in Australia. The term "Vietnamese Australian" means an Australian of ethnic Vietnamese (i.e., Kinh) descent, and is not synonymous with "Vietnam-born", as a large proportion (26.6 per cent) of Australians born in Vietnam are, in fact, ethnic Chinese.

Over three quarters of Vietnam-born live in New South Wales (40.7 per cent) and Victoria (36.8 per cent), although there is slightly more Vietnamese living in Melbourne than Sydney. In Melbourne they congregate in the suburbs of Footscray and Springvale, while in Sydney they are concentrated in Cabramatta and Fairfield.

Religion

According to census data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2004, Vietnamese Australians are, by religion, 30.3 per cent Catholic, 0.4 per cent Anglican, 3.1 Other Christian, 55.2 per cent Other Religions (mainly Buddhist), and 11.0 per cent No Religion.

Language

In 2001, the Vietnamese language was spoken at home by 174,236 persons in Australia. Vietnamese is the sixth most widely spoken language in the country after English, the Chinese languages, Italian, Greek and Arabic.

Controversy

During October 2003, national foreign program broadcaster SBS began airing a Vietnamese news program called Thoi Su. The purpose was to provide a news service to cater for Australia's Vietnamese population as part of its WorldWatch news and current affairs package. Unfortunately, this action backfired and caused the Vietnamese community to protest. The mistake that SBS made was that Thoi Su was produced in Vietnam by the communist Vietnamese government. This distressed the Vietnamese Australian community because the majority of Vietnamese Australians were refugees who fled Vietnam to escape communism. Thoi Su contained pro-communist imagery and did not report events such as political arrests or religious oppression in Vietnam. The protests eventually led to SBS apologise and drop the program (which was being provided at no cost to SBS through a satellite connection) and caused SBS, from then on, to place a warning before every WorldWatch news program saying that SBS does not endorse the content of the following foreign news program. [1]

Notable Vietnamese Australians

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