To: American Community Survey Census People. I am certainly glad to get your news and be able to navigate around the site more easily. Because my interest is Vietnamese Americans, especially those living in San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara Metropolitan area, I enjoyed looking on this dreary rainy afternoon (abnormal for the area) to see changes in the population. Wow! The people -- nguoi viet -- are over 14% of the total population of 1,803,549 living in San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara Metro Area. Even with your large margin of error this is news. Of the 126,620 Vietnamese people, 2.80 to 1 were born in another country than the USA (Native Born). When you look at this statistic another way, it means that more than 1/3 of the Vietnamese people in the San Jose - Sunnyvale - Santa Clara Metropolitan Area are born in the USA. That's news too. We can also see that 3/4 of the Foreign Born Vietnamese residents in the SJSSC Metro are naturalized citizens. This compares with less than half of the Foreign Born other-ethnicity residents who have naturalized. Wow. People are always interested in statistics with big differences, so I would like to point out first some similarities of those relevant in 2007. A big similarity is income levels, length of residence in the same home, and employment status. Government workers are another similar attainment group between Vietnamese people in the total population of 1,803,549. It is very interesting that a big difference in the total employed population and Vietrnamese is those who are in "production, transportation, and material moving occupations" are a much larger proportion of Vietnamese, both male and female. More than half as many Vietnamese in the SJSSC Metro area are engaged in manufacturing as the rest of the population. Service area, as would be expected, is more likely to be female employment among Vietnamese than by men. Very interesting that the median income of females without husbands is exactly equal for everyone, including Vietnamese, but the poverty level of Vietnamese women without husbands and with children is higher than the total population. Government workers are another similar equal attainment group. Downside statistics for Vietnamese in the SJSSC Metro: twice as high percentage at poverty level; educational attainment (although that gap closes at high school, the great leveler); and a higher proportion of housing costs for Vietnamese homeowners. Rentals are at a closer range. There is a serious matter that I would like to point out, Census People. That is that in your educational materials about the census, the pdf file for "subject definitions" is brightly decorated with a red field and a yellow star. This is a direct symbol of the flag of Socialist Vietnam, the country which used to be only North Vietnam but then invaded South Vietnam and took it over in 1975. We can see from your statistics that 85% of the foreign-born Vietnamese residents of SJSSC Metro area entered before 1999. Half of those (41.5%) entered between 1990 to 1999, the other half before 1990. Most of the 1990s wave of immigration are from the Humanitarian Operation (H.O.) program, an agreement negotiated between the U.S. and Vietnam that allowed people who were imprisoned by the Communist victors more than three years after 1975 to immigrate, and their families. At least half of those who entered before 1990 were refugees from Communism known as Boat People, who escaped on small boats at great peril. They did not do this for economic gain; they did it because of the oppression of the regime -- property confiscation, imprisonment, removal to remote areas with shelter or supplies, and the unequal draft of young men to fight in the killing fields of Cambodia. When they see a red field with a yellow star they are offended and insulted. The same is true for many Chinese Americans, as that is the symbol and colors of Communist China's flag too. The graphic designers in the Census Bureau probably do not know this. Please tell the decision-makers to change the design -- how about white stars on a blue field? Thank you for your consideration, Jean Libby, editor VietAm Review http://vietamreview.blogharbor.com   more »