Trump’s racist immigration policies finally get around to Asian-American communities.
This policy move comes from some much deeper structural racism in specific US states where Vietnamese culture is strongest in the post-war period.
It may get cloaked in anti-gang rhetoric even if there’s no Southern border, and even if the average American much less the below-average Trumpist, has rarely encountered such violence.
The number of people affected is probably so small as to make this seem like a…. stunt.
More likely are some US interests in gaining economic concessions from Vietnam in a subsequent negotiation.
Imagine the “unintended” consequence climate in everyday life as anyone who remotely looks “Asian” gets to be even more a subject of whatever additional bigotry was already present. And now there’s more targets for ICE to rationalize their existence.
In essence, the administration has now decided that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the country before the establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam are subject to standard immigration law—meaning they are all eligible for deportation.
The new stance mirrors White House efforts to clamp down on immigration writ large, a frequent complaint of the president’s on the campaign trail and one he links to a litany of ills in the United States.
The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are “violent criminal aliens.” But Washington and Hanoi have a unique 2008 agreement that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War.