Vietnamese-Americans – Silicon Valley One World

Did President Obama seek to hearten the Vietnamese people or to make sales for U.S. companies By Sharon Simonson Pride and hope, disdain and despair fought for mindshare in Silicon Valley’s Vietnamese-American community this week as President Barack Obama visited the Southeast Asian nation and announced the end to a 50-year arms embargo. The population’s youth and the legions of Vietnamese people who turned out for the president, some waiting for hours in the rain “to see a car pass by,” cheered Loc Van Vu, who founded San Jose’s Immigration Resettlement and Cultural Center in 1976. If the president is pivoting to Asia, the Vietnamese are pivoting back, he said: “It looked like the whole country is looking west to America, freedom and democracy. “Let the Vietnamese have weapo...

By Sharon Simonson Xuan Ha, former director of San Jose's Vietnamese American Business Association, has joined the city of San Jose’s Small Business Ally Program as a small business coach. She speaks fluent Vietnamese. The Business Ally program helps San Jose entrepreneurs find the best location and then navigate the city permit process to complete remodeling or other work including new business registration. Immigrants own about half of San Jose’s 56,000 small businesses—those employing fewer than 35 people. Vietnamese-Americans, including refugees, immigrants and their U.S.-born children, constitute the largest Asian population in the city of San Jose with 104,000 people, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics. Seventy-five percent are foreign-born and near...

Tag: Vietnamese-Americans

President’s Visit Evokes Pleasure, Pain for Silicon Valley Vietnamese

San Jose City Adds Vietnamese-American Small Business Advisor