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Immigrants Desperately Running Away from Conflict or Oppression

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Introduction
After the United States’ withdrawal from Viet Nam War and the fall of the Saigon to Communist in April, 1975, millions of people fled the country, for their lives and freedom. Many of them immigrated to the U.S. in two different waves. The first wave started in 1975, comprising people who associated with the Americans. The second wave included people who wanted to escape the Communist government’s control. The factors that pushed these two waves of immigration out of Viet Nam, and their efforts to be assimilated into the U.S. society are now parts of American history.
The First Wave
American involvement in the Vietnam War ended in April 1975 following by an evacuation of U.S. citizens, Vietnamese who worked for the U.S. …show more content…

and eastern U.S., and to mine gold in California. Once the railroad was finished, the government wanted to stop them from immigrating to the U.S., so it issued “Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,” which was designed to “effectively halted Chinese immigrations for ten years and prohibited Chinese from becoming U.S. citizens.” After the 1882, most Chinese people were deported before they could immigrate to the U.S. Only a small number of Elite Chinese were exempted from exclusion laws.
It seems ironic that most white Americans who were against Vietnamese immigrating to the U.S. were European descendants. Obviously, most Americans had never seen themselves as immigrants, but native people, and the U.S. was the country for Western European immigrants who definitely were not indigenous people. It seems ironic that “America … sen[t] half a million men to a small nation; … bombing and burning and battle, shattering the economy and the social order, and then balk[ed] at accepting in return 150,000 peaceful refugees into a society of 210 million.” However, most Americans were afraid that those desperate refugees would inevitably become a new burden on the country. In fact, 150,000 refugees was nothing compared to more than 8 million unemployed Americans. Even if none of the Vietnamese refugees worked, there would have been little effect on the U.S economy. In a news article published by The Evening Times on May 01, 1975, “New Jersey had a desperate

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