The Vietnam War started in 1955, between North and South parts of the country. China and their allies supported the north side while U.S. supported the south side.
This war occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, and lasted 19 years, 180 days. As a result, North government won the war and took the power beside Communist governments. This war causes approximately 245,000 to 2000,000 of civil dead and over one million of refugees (Usdod, Shenon, Philip 1995). The luckier refugees were taken by countries such as Canada. Some escapees spend 12 months in camp, some of them even years. There were many camps, for example, in Thailand and in Hong Kong.
The Canadian government helps the Vietnamese refugees by giving them a home, food, healthcare, and education. However, the Vietnamese refugees faced many hardships in Canada such as language, discrimination, and lack of financial support (CBC,Refuge for the unwanted). The most effective factor that affected Vietnamees refugee adaption in Canada was learning a new language (Dwok B. Chan and Doreen Marie Indra, 1987). Many refugees could not speak a word of English or French, and understand even basic words such as washroom, phone, and post office. However, they needed to obtain speaking skills because they had to look for job, house, and a school for their children (CBC-Welcome to Canada: Vietnamese refugees arrive). However, Canadian sponsorship programs for Vietnamese refugee were helpful (Dwok B. Chan and Doreen Marie Indra, 1987). There was multiple courses help refugee to adjust in a new country: Canadian culture course, opening bank account course, language learning course in English and French, and Canadian postal system. There were also emotional support and advice was provided by privately sponsor.
In spite of the fact that Canada is multicultural country, the pockets of prejudice and discrimination against immigrants do exist. The policy problems of multiculturalism is associated with the appearing of race or ethnic discrimination, nationality discrimination, language discrimination, or even religion and cultural discrimination. These problems was touching every single place of their life. The study in 1997 which found that Black and Asian workers earned an average of 15% less than the average Canadian worker and that more than 30% of immigrants lived below the poverty line. Furthermore, approximately 60,000 hate crimes are committed annually (Roberts) in Canada’s nine major urban centers. Sixty-one percent (61%) of those crimes were committed against racial minorities and twenty-three percent (23%) against religious minorities. (CBC, Anti-Vietnamese discrimination) Finally, financial problem was the most serious problem. According to Paula Wolf, refugees must have had relationship with government if they wanted to earn money. Moreover, they had to work for low wage and almost jobs were dangerous because of political corruption. As they were poor, they could not pay their rent even though they must have paid the rent in advance. They could not afford to pay (Paula Wolf, Lancaster online, 2013). However, Canada supported Vietnamese refugee financially. Because financial support was the most problem that Vietnamese refugee faced, Canada solved this problem by different ways. At first, Canadian government provided flights every three days to the refugee. Canadian government also was sponsored about on refugee for one privately refugee. Moreover, as there were governmental sponsors, there were also private sponsors. Both of these sponsors had many volunteers provided clothing, shelter, food, and health care for all refugees. From the privately sponsor side, there was campaign to save many Vietnamese refugee families which organizing by York University professor (CBC Newsmagazine, 1979).
To conclude,