Reps. Lou Correa and Michelle Steel to co-chair group focused on Vietnamese communities
Two Orange County politicians will co-chair the Congressional Vietnam Caucus for the first time.
Reps. Lou Correa, D-Anaheim, and Michelle Steel, R-Seal Beach, are spearheading the Congressional Vietnam Caucus this year, a group focused on bilateral U.S.-Vietnam relations and prioritizing issues important to Vietnamese American communities across the country, according to Correa’s office.
The Orange County pair joins Reps. Zoe Lofgren, a Bay Area Democrat who represents one of the largest Vietnamese communities outside of Vietnam, and Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, as additional co-chairs of the caucus.
“This is a very, very exciting year,” Steel said in a joint interview with Correa. “I’ve represented Orange County’s Little Saigon for 25 years, and for the first time this year, the Vietnam Caucus will have two co-chairs representing Orange County.”
Correa and Steel have represented most of the Little Saigon community, in some fashion, over the past 25 years, the Democratic lawmaker said.
“We’ve made some wonderful friendships in the Vietnamese community. These are our friends and neighbors, and we’re excited to be co-chairs because over the years both of us have gotten very acquainted with not only the historical but also the personal perspective of the history of Vietnamese Americans in this country,” Correa said.
Steel’s 45th congressional district includes the cities of Garden Grove, Westminster and Fountain Valley, all home to large Vietnamese populations. Correa has also represented Orange County’s Vietnamese community in Garden Grove, Orange and Santa Ana over the course of his career.
“Michelle and I will be reminded of our mission on a daily basis, why we’re in Washington and what we have to do and how hard we have to work,” he said.
Steel, a Korean American immigrant whose parents fled communist North Korea, said her unique background has helped her relate to the Vietnamese diaspora. The community in Orange County, which still is mostly made up of immigrants who run small businesses, need proper support, she said.
“We have to empower everyone, especially the first generation, to achieve their American Dream like I did,” Steel said. “I was born in Korea and raised in Japan, and now I’m a member of Congress. I want all of the Vietnamese American community to achieve their dreams too.”
Correa recalled memories of going to high school with Vietnamese refugees and learning about their individual experiences. He became acutely aware about the war through television, but what made it more personal for him was interacting with the flood of these new Americans in search for freedom, Correa said.
“Learning more about their experience, learning what they had lost, learning about the family members that have been left behind,” he said. “And the dream the Vietnamese community has today and has had of restoring freedoms, human rights, religious freedom to Vietnam again.”
The duo has worked together in the past to introduce legislation and resolutions pertaining to the Vietnamese community.
In April 2022, they introduced a resolution commemorating the 47th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and in May, they introduced a bipartisan bill that would prohibit detaining or deporting Vietnamese refugees who arrived on or before July 12, 1995.
Both were co-sponsored by a mix of California Democrats and Republicans, including Reps. Barbara Lee, Young Kim, Ro Khanna and Katie Porter.
Correa and Steel pledged to continue their work on improving the lives of Vietnamese Americans in their districts and across the country and to find bipartisan solutions to challenges abroad, including basic human rights violations, religious liberty and press freedom.
“I’m always grateful, because even though we are from different parties, we’ve been working together on bipartisan issues,” Steel said.
“Partisanship should not be the controlling factor here,” Correa said. “Both Michelle and I agree we’ve got to work together to represent the greater community as well as the Vietnamese American community. This is the way it’s supposed to work. We’re both paid to go to Washington to fix problems for people who we represent.”
By:
HANNA KANG
Source:
The Orange County Register
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