Mr Pham Ngoc Duy (left)

Tran Hoang Hoa, a parent in Hanoi, said she and her husband have reconsidered their plan to send the daughter to the US for university.

“We have been preparing for overseas study for many years,” she said. “My daughter has been aware of the challenges she would have to face in the US. Meanwhile, we have VND2 billion in bank accounts for funding for the study.”

“However, we suddenly have to rethink about the plan as Donald Trump has been elected the new US President,” she said.

Hoa and many other Vietnamese parents might have read the news about concerns among the Vietnamese community in the US about racism.  

Vietnamese parents are worried about sending their children to the US to study because of US President-elect Trump's attitudes toward immigration.

Emdep.vn reported that Vietnamese students in the US and the community of people of color were worried amid the risk of being attacked by groups of white men said to support the President-elect Donald Trump.

Ha Huy Hoang, a Facebooker, wrote that his girlfriend, a student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in California, was attacked by a group of white people.

Another Facebooker wrote: “My cousin (born and raised in America) walked past a Trump rally in NYC (where she lives) and was told ‘Go back to your country you chink’."

Truong Pham Hoai Chung, who has a master's in Education Policy & Management from Harvard University, said on Dan Tri that as soon as the news about the US election was released, two Vietnamese parents asked him about sending their children to study in the US. 

Chung said there was no need to be worried about the US presidency, because the training quality of the top-tier universities and their policies on international students will remain unchanged. 

The academic environment at all universities in the US highlights openness and diversity. 

Pham Ngoc Duy, who holds a master's of Education Management from Boston College, said if students want to study in an advanced schooling environment to obtain knowledge useful for their future jobs, the US would be a good choice. 

However, if they want to stay in the US to live and work after graduation, they would have to consider different possibilities and wait until policies related to the issue are clarified.


Thanh Mai