Come Here To Me!

A little Vietnamese boy, his sallow face pinched with exhaustion, led a plane-load of boat people ashore to their new life, as the first group of refugees arrived in Ireland yesterday.

So wrote the Irish Independent of 10 August 1979. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the so-called ‘Boat People’ from Vietnam in Dublin. They arrived by aeroplane, but the images of people fleeing Vietnam in boats had made their impact on popular consciousness. At a time when the Irish public were more accustomed to emigration than immigration, there was enormous public interest in the plight of the Vietnamese who came here against the backdrop of political violence in their own country, though the dialogue around them in the press was sometimes curious.

Mark Magire, author of the the book Differently Irish: A Cultural History Exploring 25 Years of Vietnamese-Irish Identity , gives brilliant insight into the contemporary discussion that surrounded their arrival here. Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway, called on the state to do more,attacking what he termed the “meager response” at first to the crisis in Vietnam. Others attempted to emphasis the quality of the people coming to Ireland. One commentator – a historian of all people – argued that we were importing “a ready made creative minority”, and even noted that “naturalised their very grandchildren… would doubtless vote Fianna Fáil.”

The images of the Vietnamese Boat People in the 1970s were broadcast into the homes of millions. It’s estimated that some 800,000 people left the country from 1975 onwards, seeking sanctuary across the world. The idea of global responsibility to assist those in war torn regions was almost unheard of, and when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees requested the Irish Government resettle three Vietnamese families in 175, the request was refused on economic grounds.

Sunday Independent, 5 August 1979.

Under pressure to play a significant role in the worsening crisis, the Irish state accepted some 200 Vietnamese people from August 1979 onwards, who were to be housed primarily in the James Connolly Memorial Hospital at Blanchardstown, with two spacious ward units converted to housing. Jim Kennedy, an Irish Red Cross beteran of some forty years who had assisted in the rehousing of 3,500 refguees who fled South to escape from sectarian attacks in the North, was optimistic, telling the Sunday Independent that “the food won’t be a problem. These people eat rice, pork, chicken, fish, vegetables and all sorts and, of course, they are great tea drinkers.” Some later arrivals would be housed by the Christian Brothers in Swords. The Vietnamese would be taught English, before being spread across the island. The real fear was ghettoisation, but as was rightly pointed out, the outcome may have been social isolation.

Irish Independent, 10 August 1979.

Despite the fact the island of Ireland was experiencing its own political turmoil, frontpage news in some parts of the world, there was almost no awareness of Ireland among the Vietnamese themselves who arrived here. One of them later recounted:

None of us knew very much about where we were going or even exactly where it was. When we arrived in Dublin Airport we thought it was only a stopping off point. We did not believe that a national airport of a country could be so small.

Media interest in the personal stories of those who arrived here was significant, the Irish Independent reporting the harrowing words of one arrival,that “we were sailing for three days and three nights when Malaysian fisherman took us in. I have left everything behind. I still have four sisters working in labour camps near Saigon.” There had been considerable media interest in Ireland in Vietnamese refugees in Britain in the months before their arrival in Ireland, a Mayo-born volunteer working with Vietnamese families in Liverpool reassuring Irish Independent readers that “the Vietnamese people are a reserved and quiet race but they have great enthusiasm and energy and would contribute more to Irish society than they would take.” There were widespread calls from across the political divide to take in more Vietnamese families, and when the families were spread into communities beyond Blanchardstown,local press reported on them with interest.

Some in the community would enter the food industry, focusing on providing take away food, in particular Chinese food, across Dublin. In Maguire’s study, one member of the community reflected that this was a difficult business to get ahead in:

Some friends and me got the money to put one family into the business and we tried to leam about the cooking, the grub! There was very little Chinese food in Ireland at that time. I learned to cook from some people who worked in a Chinese restaurant and after that I showed other people how to cook. In 1984,1 was working on a comer near a bus stop— we were only making a living.

Many of the Vietnamese families who arrived here in 1979 ultimately settled in Ireland. In an excellent 2015 piece on the original families who settled here, Erin McGuire noted that the popular Pho Viet restaurant on Parnell Street is maintained by one of the 1979 families.