Notes: This is what it's like when your country does not require you to conform to the political agenda that government has assigned to your ethnic group. This is a first-person refugee story from Britain - the people are very candid about their relationship with Vietnam and not invested in old political issues. They do not posture as victims, but as people who got an opportunity and worked to capitalize on it. The political agendas that constrain Vietnamese-Canadians appear not to have infected Britain. This is what we would be hearing from former boat people in Canada if they were free to speak up or if the media sought them out -- for some rare Canadian examples see the related items. The only shortcoming is we don’t learn the circumstances of their departure -- if they were ethnic Chinese or impersonated ethnic Chinese, but that's not what the story is about in any case. |