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Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024
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25 Going on 1.5

Thank the first generation of Vietnamese-American immigrants for what is now Little Saigon.

The 3-square-mile area covers parts of Garden Grove, Westminster and several other OC cities. It’s home to 3,500 or so businesses, serves as the cultural center for an ethnic group that numbers nearly 190,000 here, and recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of its official designation.

Thank “Generation 1.5” for steady expansion of business opportunities the Vietnamese-American community has seen over the past few decades.

“1.5” is a term often applied to immigrants who arrived in their new homeland before or during their teens.

Many of the 1.5-ers who came to Orange County with their parents during the 1970s and ’80s are now in their 30s and 40s. They’re the generation that has branched out from the limited set of work and entrepreneurial options the first-generation immigrants encountered when they arrived in OC.

The 1.5-ers also have gotten beyond a notion once widely held among elders in the ethnic group: Children of Vietnamese immigrants were supposed to strive for a short list of “proper” career choices, with medicine or law at the top.

“We’re getting more diversity in occupation, without a doubt,” said Tam Nguyen, president of the Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce of OC in Fountain Valley, which was founded in 1985 and now has about 1,300 member businesses.

Nguyen came to the U.S. as a baby and is now 39. He owns Advance Beauty College Inc. in Garden Grove and Laguna Hills. The college trains students for work in nail salons and cosmetology and was honored recently at the Business Journal’s annual Family Owned Business Awards.

“In my generation, you see people going into arts, journalism—nontraditional occupations that mainstream Americans go into,” Nguyen said.

Entertainment

That includes the entertainment sector, though it can still be “tough for the Vietnamese-Americans to penetrate the mainstream market,” according to Tracy Pham, founder of modeling agency Runway Entertainment.

She also is the human resources director at Westminster-based spa chair maker Lexor Inc., which has about $13 million in revenue and 97 employees nationwide.

Pham grew up as a ballerina and worked in the entertainment industry for 10 years, including as a model while attending California State University, Fullerton, where she earned a degree in international business and became the first member of her family to graduate from college.

“My parents didn’t see a long-term career or having financial freedom being a dancer, so they never supported me,” said Pham, who managed to juggle education and her modeling stint throughout college.

She launched Runway to “provide Vietnamese talents an opportunity to work in the entertainment industry” after realizing there was a lack of talent representation.

Pham’s story reflects the heavy emphasis the first generation placed on higher education.

Many of the first-generation immigrants—who came as refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975 or on sponsorships by American families or nonprofits—focused on making money and putting their children through school, “since their own opportunity was gone,” according to Nguyen. “Their options were limited, and options continue to be limited for those who come over, because you keep referring them to the same thing that you know.”

The first generation only had “hard work ethics and the community,” he added. “They had to leverage the community that was already established here.”

OC offered that camaraderie as it grew into the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam. An estimated 189,000 Vietnamese-Americans live here, about 6% of the county’s population and 16% of the Vietnamese population in the U.S.

Opportunities

The emergence of Little Saigon helped shape—and, to some degree, limit—the first generation’s opportunities. The densely packed ethnic quarter presented clear opportunities for merchants and service providers with Vietnamese language skills. Developers such as Frank Jao eventually met market demand by building the Asian Garden Mall and other retail centers in Little Saigon.

A vibrant press took root with the establishment of Nguoi Viet, and numerous other Vietnamese-language newspapers eventually helped bind the community together.

There also has been a trend of Generation 1.5 bridging what once were gaps between the community and the mainstream of business.

“From the Vietnamese standpoint, ‘mainstream’ means the greater white community, and we’re going more into that,” said Nguyen, pointing to the 15-member board of directors overseeing the local Vietnamese-American chamber.

“The diversity of our board reflects that of our members,” he said. “Only three are involved in their family businesses, and the other 12 have taken the jump to corporate America, climbing the ladder.”

Board members, many of whom are 1.5 generation, include Merrick Nguyen, a financial adviser at Wells Fargo Advisors LLC in Irvine; Anthony Chung, a health and wellness regional director at Walmart, and Phillip Hoang, a software engineer at Raytheon Co.

The chamber’s chair-elect, Gia Ly, was a manager at Farmers Insurance Group before taking the entrepreneurial path. She now owns Zen Vegetarian Restaurant and Crepe Corner in Little Saigon. Both are on Bolsa Avenue, which is known as “the nucleus of Little Saigon,” according to Danny Tran, manager of Wells Fargo’s Westminster branch. Tran came to the U.S. when he was 11, sponsored by his father, who was a South Vietnam soldier and had come to America ahead of his family.

Restaurants

Restaurants have long been a mainstay of Little Saigon’s business activities, said Tran, who offers a clear example of how Generation 1.5 is finding new opportunities and helping to change the commercial landscape of the ethnic enclave.

“When the bank opened this location [in 2008] … a lot of restaurants were using cash only,” Tran said. “Our goal is to make sure businesses have (credit card) merchant service. We educate the community that using merchant service will increase the customer base.”

The branch serves about 13,000 customers a month, about 97% of whom are Vietnamese. Its employees are all Vietnamese.

“We’ve tried having Chinese, Hispanic employees, and that didn’t work out,” Tran said. “Customers purposely come for Vietnamese bankers. This particular branch was opened to secure the Vietnamese community in Little Saigon.”

Tran said individual banking needs have become more sophisticated.

“Now they come for complex financial needs,” he said. “We deal with the affluent, the multimillionaires. They want to invest and transfer wealth. They come for financial planning, advisory, trust—it’s a transformation.”

Wealth is just one of the things Paul Lam wants to transfer to his two sons and two daughters, who were born in the U.S.

“I will pass whatever success I have to my kids,” said Lam, owner of Lam Precision Inc., a Garden Grove-based aerospace parts maker. His products are used in Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jets and Boeing 747s. “But what I [also] want to pass down is a structure of the family. You need to contribute back into the family and keep the family structure, no matter what.”

Lam came to the U.S. when he was 18—perhaps closer to being first generation than 1.5. He fled Vietnam in 1980 and was one of two survivors on a boat raided by pirates.

“I paid a high price when I arrived here in San Jose,” Lam said.

He studied manufacturing and machining at San Jose City College, while most Vietnamese students there majored in computer-related subjects. Lam felt he needed to be in Southern California to land a manufacturing job, so he came to OC in 1983, not knowing anyone here. He found work at M&M Machines in Garden Grove, where he worked for four years under American owners before it was sold.

He worked in small shops until he opened Lam Precision seven years ago. The company sees about $1 million in revenue and employs nine workers, including Lam’s brothers who immigrated on Lam’s sponsorship. It recently moved to an 8,000-square-foot facility, nearly tripling in size.

Lam said he sees himself as an example of “an Asian man” competing and surviving in a “very American” business.

Lam has counterparts around OC, including Phu Hoang, recently honored with an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Business Journal. Hoang’s Virtium Technology in Huntington Beach specializes in solid-state disk drives for the industrial market. It employs about 100 workers, about two-thirds of them at its 30,000-square-foot headquarters, where it handles some manufacturing and distribution, as well as research and developement.

South OC

Advance Beauty College’s Nguyen also is eyeing growth in a “very non-ethnic” market in South OC, where he recently set up a branch in Laguna Hills through an acquisition.

“You have an ethnic business moving into [that market], and it’s not the norm,” he said. “But what I’m seeing is that there are other people, other Vietnamese businesses in South County making it.”

Nguyen’s parents were initially disappointed when he decided to step away from medicine—after earning a medical degree from American University of the Caribbean—and put to use his MBA from Cal State Fullerton to operate a beauty school that they had owned.

“Doing what the parents want you to do—in some ways, that’s easier and respectful,” Nguyen said. “But this is my passion.”

The density of the Vietnamese community here has driven Cal State Fullerton to devise a bachelor’s degree program in Vietnamese, along with a Vietnamese concentration in its international business major. Nguyen, along with CSUF assistant professor Natalie Tran, co-chairs the program’s advisory council.

Such initiatives could serve U.S.-born Vietnamese-Americans well, according to Nguyen, who helps oversee the local chamber’s weekly Vietnamese language class for young professionals and also teaches Vietnamese to his three children at home.

“There’s a strong desire for our children to retain the language,” he said, while noting an uncertain future for Little Saigon. “What about after us? Obviously our kids are going to be completely integrated into the American culture. Looking at Little Saigon in five to 10 years … are we going to be a product of South Coast Plaza? Are we going to leave? You can’t say anything definitive.”

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