Vietnamese ‘refugees’ finding integration lias serious problems

Press, 29 October 1981, Page 21

Vietnamese ‘refugees’ finding integration lias serious problems

By

CAROLINE STEELE,

a member of the University of

Canterbury post-graduate journalism course.

How do you begin to feel at home in a strange country. with virtually no possessions. no money, and a language and culture which are totally alien? , Since 1976 and up to the end of May,-1981, more than three and a half thousand Indo-Chinese have been resettled in Ney,’ Zealand.- Six hundred and Sixty-nine of them are in Christchurch and 80 per. cent of these are ethnic or Chinese Vietnamese.'

What has their first year or so been like, and what are the major problems they face integrating in New Zealand?

The national co-ordinator of South-East Asian Migrant Education. Chris Hawley, says that the Asian people are hard working and intelligent. Thirty years of war has made them aggressive. “The young single men and women will make it. It will be hard for them, but not nearly as hard as for those with dependents. Others won't make it for reasons of financial circumstances and the horror of what they have been through,” he says. But what do the Vietnamese themselves think of this summing up? Earlier this year they set up their own "Vietnamese Centre in Manchester Street. Its activities include English and Vietnamese language classes, sporting afternoons with -the Y.M.C.A., and Vietnamese cooking sessions.

It was described as a ••friendship” centre by Kim Macann, its public relations officer. “We want to get together and have a community,” she says.

Bilingual language classes are taught in the evenings voluntarily by Vietnamese teachers. “Communication is the biggest problem,” says Sao Trinh, who is one of the teachers there and a liaison worker at the Education Department’s E.S.L. Unit (English as a second language). All the South-East Asian people spent their first four weeks in New Zealand in the Mangere Reception Centre at Auckland learning basic English and following an “orientation” programme. For

most of them — even a year later — English is still a hard slog. There are classes at Christchurch Polytechnic and home tutors are available, but study in the evening after a full day’s work is not easy at the best of times. However, Sao thinks her classes are successful, mainly because the teachers are bilingual and can explain difficult points of grammar to the students in their own tongue. “The students are making quicker progress this way,” she adds.

Until fluency in English is reached it is extremely hard to make a living in New Zealand. The children are luckier because they learn fast and are given ' extra help at school, but nearly all the adults are working all day in a factory or at manual jobs — regardless of their qualifications.

“We have a fully qualified doctor who is working as a hospital porter,” Kim says. Sao talks of a lady who speaks fluent French and was a teacher in Vietnam. She now works in a factory. “She accepts it quite happily,” Sao adds. Among employers most Vietnamese are earning the reputation of being good workers, Kim says. But this can go against them. A Vietnamese will usually accept extra work loaded on to him when a New Zealander often would not.

“They know they are being imposed upon but they can’t say anything; they have not got the language to refuse,” she says. “I can only tell them to go and talk to the foreman about it, but they are very afraid — they feel insecure.”

There have been times when employment has been refused on the grounds that the Vietnamese are “alien’” and they would be taking jobs from kiwis. “All I can say is that the New Zealand Government has accepted these people as permanent

residents in' the country and in time they are granted citizenship,” Kim says.

Sao put it slightly differently: ' “Usually the Vietnamese just quietly put up with things.” However, she adds: “I would say they have a very good relationship with other New Zealanders.”

In some quarters there is a sensitivity about using the word “refugee.” “The term is not appropriate because many of them have got New Zealand citizenship,” Sao says.

Activities at the Vietnamese Centre also reflect a growing awareness of the need to retain their own

culture as well as adapting to New Zealand’s.

On Sunday afternoons, the children are taught Vietnamese language and culture. “The children are accepting very quickly — they speak English all the time and their parents get left behind. There is a fear that they might lose their mother tongue. The generation gap is widened even further,” Kim says.

Sao is anxious that the Vietnamese Centre is not seen as being separatist. "It aims to bring back something of the country we left behind. It soothes the homesickness. Quite a number of the members are young men and they have left behind their wives and children — they want a more meaningful existence.

“We are hoping that once we get the people together we can help them with feel-

ings of homesickness and boredom and we can eventually join in with other groups in the community."

At the annual conference of the New Zealand Demographic Society this year. Keith Taylor, director of the Inter-Church Commission on Immigration and Refugee Resettlement, commented: “So much of our time and energy in this country is centred on the short-term, immediate practical response to refugees.

“The long-term issue of integration must be faced in view of the number of IndoChinese now being resettled. Unemployment and racism — or employment and racial harmony. Whatever side of the coin, there is a most apt proverb:

‘The butterfly sleeps well perched o'n the temple bell . . . until it rings’.”