British public ‘not as welcoming’ to us today, post-war Vietnamese migrant says – The Irish News

A Vietnamese migrant who left her home country immediately after the Vietnam War before arriving in Britain has said the public is “not as welcoming” of migrants today.

Yen Hoang Lam, 52, a GP from Wallington, near Croydon, left Vietnam in the late 1970s on a boat aged five with her mother, father and younger twin brothers.

Ms Lam, who spent five years in Scotland before moving to England, told the PA news agency: “Five of us got on a rickety boat and I remember the gas fumes, the smell of vomit.

“One of my first memories is seeing my father crying because he had to… sell everything to get the money to initially get passage to Macau.”

Ms Lam’s father, Manh Hoang, is of Chinese heritage and part of Vietnam’s ethnic minority known as the Hoa, a community that was exiled from Vietnam between 1978 and 1979.

She said her parents’ friends “all turned against them and people spied on them”, prompting her family to flee by boat to Macau before settling in Hong Kong for a year.

At the time, the UK was among a list of countries accepting Vietnamese migrants, which Ms Lam’s father chose because he “felt the weather was the most temperate”.

The family was flown to Livingston, Scotland, and Ms Lam described her time there as positive, saying she was “very well received in the community”.

“The neighbors were kind and helpful and helped my parents a lot. They helped them learn to drive and supported them to settle in the community,” she said.

She remembers being racially abused by older students at her school, but said it was “the only time I’ve ever had that happen” after her principal punished the students.

She believes the British public’s current perception of migrants is not the same as her experience more than 40 years ago.

“The public is not as accepting or welcoming now,” she said.

“The sentiment towards migrants is very poor. In my time, people were very kind to us because it was new.

“I guess it wasn’t that bad.”

A new exhibition organized by Voice ESEA, a not-for-profit organization which aims to eliminate discrimination against the UK’s East and South-East Asian (ESEA) community, will showcase the history of the ESEA community in the UK, including another story about a Vietnamese family. who fled their native country to Britain by boat.

Choon Young Tan, 35, head of events at Voice ESEA, said the exhibition is designed to highlight the “hidden” history of the British ESEA community.

He told the PA: “It explores and presents the history of British East and South-East Asia, back to the 1500s, to now detail our journeys from South-East Asia and our struggles, for example, with racism and assimilation .

“But it also highlights our triumphs, showing how embedded we are in British history.

“I think discovering these stories completely transforms your sense of belonging and the confidence to exist fully and proudly.

“We want (the ESEA community) to be seen and we want their stories to be told, which is why a lot of these stories have been told from the perspective of those people in those communities.”

Ms Lam said the new exhibition was a good way to “document” the stories of the post-war Vietnamese community.

She said: “(The Vietnamese community) is no longer in people’s knowledge. It was a long time ago, so many people wouldn’t know about it.

“It’s good to document that good can come from really horrible situations like this.”

The exhibition, called Yellow Peril Awareness Day, will be held in Bethnal Green, London and Ancoats, Manchester on May 6, which marks the day the US signed a federal law barring Chinese immigrants from entering the country.

Mr Tan explained: “This was one of the biggest anti-immigration laws against a particular ethnic group.

“Although it happened in the US, it certainly had knock-on effects in the UK.”

Mr Tan added that the exhibition’s name had been controversial among the ESEA community, but said the term also referred to a general fear, distrust and hatred of Chinese and other Asians.

“This term describes the act of anti-ESEA sentiments, racism, discrimination and prejudice due to people’s hatred and fears,” he said.

“The idea is that we’re raising awareness of what happened in our history.”