The war is over ... in Vietnam
The so-called Vietnam war is over, and the outcome satisfied no one who is now in Canada. That's why they are in Canada.
Nevertheless to understand the politics of the Vietnamese community in Canada, you have to understand the war. The community is divided over it -- between those who are still fighting for Saigon and those who left the war behind.
Those who are still fighting the war find it to their advantage to re-frame both the Vietnam war and the refugee crisis as something they were not. To understand the politics you have to get past that re-framing and find out what the war and the refugee crisis were really about.
Canada is not the US
The division in Canada's Vietnamese community is different from the US. Do not fall into the trap of using the US as a model just because there are many more Vietnamese in the US.
After the war, the US admitted hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who were associated with the US side on the war, which would include most of the urban ruling elite from Saigon. Consequently in the US community there is only one way to look at the war -- Saigon should have won.
Canada was not a combatant in Vietnam, and Canada's response to the refugee situations in Vietnam was very different from the US response. Canada did not respond to the fall of Saigon in the political way that the US did. Canada did not start accepting refugees until 4 years later when a separate humanitarian issue arose. Canada accepted people from all over Vietnam on a non-partisan basis. Consequently, there is great diversity of opinion about the war among the refugees, and much less interest in discussing it.
The other difference between the two countries is that Americans in general know a lot about the Vietnam war, so the pro-war faction in the community cannot re-frame it to their advantage. The Vietnamese community has little or no influence over US policy. The US learned its lesson.
Canadians know little about the war and can be easily influenced to respond to the Vietnamese community. Canada is deeply involved in the politics of its Vietnamese community and has adopted a partisan re-framing of the war that aggravates the division in the community.
For most Vietnamese in Canada, the war is not part of their identity
The Vietnam war was a settled issue for years before any substantial number of Vietnamese came to Canada.
Canada was not involved in the war
and Canada's immigration policy was non-partisan, that is, the Vietnam war had no bearing on when and how Canada chose Vietnamese people to admit to Canada.
Nevertheless, most Vietnamese families had members who had some role in the war, in part because of conscription. Because of Canada's non-partisan immigration policies, those war experiences are diverse. It is often the case that different members of one family were on different sides of a conflict.
Many in the community have not personally experienced conflict at all. The boat people were young and many were born after the war was over. At least half of today's Canadians of Vietnamese origin were born in Canada.
When thinking of expressing one's Vietnamese origins, one is more likely to identify with things such as the village one's ancestors came from, their cultural heritage, their ethnicity, or their journey to Canada. The community is diverse. The people ruling Saigon were a distinct and fairly homogeneous group.
These are all good reasons not to engage in partisan war-related politics today in Canada. Old foreign wars are best left behind so as not to divide communities in Canada. Nearly all of the community agrees, and it is what Canadians expect of immigrant communities.[1]
For some Vietnamese in Canada the war is their identity
One small group characterizes themselves as victims of Vietnam's conflicts.
Some members of the former ruling elite of Saigon, particularly member of the military, are still intensely engaged in war politics. It is a political choice that some make to lock backward rather than forward. Their numbers in Canada are small and they receive a lot of support from their counterparts in the US.
The Saigon urban elite was part of a distinct ruling class in Vietnam that goes back centuries. It is not easy for them to give up that status. Some have chosen to try to remain a distinct part of the Vietnamese community in Canada. They still want to be recognized as a legitimate ruling elite and they are engaged in an intense political fight for that recognition. This is who Canadians politicians are pandering to.
Saigon lost the war ... in Vietnam
The Vietnam war was a civil war against the exploitative and hated Saigon military dictatorship who was chosen to rule by foreign powers, in a region hacked out of Vietnam by foreign powers.
The Vietnamese won.
Everyone knew they would, even the Americans -- that's why they left. That's why the French left. That's why Canada was never there.
The Saigon regime spent its first ten years in power fighting the people of South Vietnam to consolidate its power. Some of the opposition that it defeated were organized crime and warlord militias -- no loss. But they never defeated the urban intelligentsia - the students and the religious establishment, and they never defeated the rural peasants who they were exploiting - the vast majority of the population. These groups today are sometimes called "the third force" to distinguish them from the communists.
The much-better-organized communists saw an opportunity and capitalized on it. Many rural peasants saw them as a better option that the ruling Saigon elite.
Failing to support or recognize the Saigon regime does not make one a communist supporter. It makes one a nationalist or anti-colonialist. When one feels a need to express their anti-communist feelings in Canada, one does not express it by supporting the Saigon regime.
Canadian politicians are making a huge mistake if they think that their pandering to the former Saigon ruling elite are scoring points with Vietnamese Canadians.
What Canadian politicians are saying to the Vietnamese in Canada is that Saigon did not lose the war. Saigon still rules in Canada.