- Title: CZECH REPUBLIC: The Czech Republic's Vietnamese community successfully integrates
- Date: 22nd April 2011
- Summary: CLOSE OF FISH IN TANK SON, DO DUY HOANG POURING TEA (SOUNDBITE) (Czech) MOTHER, NGUYEN THI THANH VAN, SAYING: "When we came in here, we founded the family firm - my sister and me, no one else."
- Embargoed: 7th May 2011 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Czech Republic, Czech Republic
- Country: Czech Republic
- Topics: International Relations,Lifestyle
- Reuters ID: LVAF3CJSEZU1H1QMXQN5MWQQBDHF
- Story Text: While there are some fears in Austria and Germany over a labour influx from the east when the two countries open their labour markets on May 1, the Czech Republic has become one of the destinations rather than the origin of labour movements.
The Czech Republic's Vietnamese community is the biggest in the region and very large by east European standards. Integration is so far proving successful.
"SAPA" is a big Asian market centre in Prague's Pisnice suburb. This is the heart of Vietnamese business in the Czech Republic.
Containers loaded with quantities of goods and foods from Asia come here daily to be distributed into thousands of small market places and shops.
Vietnamese, Chinese and Asian practical, art or technical products, clothes, underwear and also foods and vegetables are offered here to the sellers and distributors.
"SAPA" offers goods not only to salesmen buying here in high volume. Everyone can come here and buy cheap clothes, home cleaning aids or special vegetables, rice and sweets or taste some Vietnamese food specialties.
And it is not a specifically Vietnamese-Czech affair says market coordinator, Zdenka Dubova.
"Goods from here are distributed not only around the Czech Republic but also Slovaks, Poles and Germans shop here. So, we can say that goods from here are distributed all around Europe," Dubova said.
The official number of Vietnamese people living and working in the Czech Republic is 65,000 people. The first wave of workers came after the governmental agreement between communist Czechoslovakia and Vietnam in the 1970s.
Thousands of Vietnamese workers arrived in the then Czechoslovakia to work mainly in industry and was soon an accepted community in the country.
After 1989, and the switch from state to private-run factories foreign workers were replaced with locals and a new generation of Vietnamese workers arrived to find work in other areas, often in sales or small businesses.
The Hanoi Klub is a civic organisation which helps Vietnamese people to live and integrate within the Czech Republic. Founded by Czech students studying the Vietnamese language and culture, the Hanoi Klub prints information booklets and journals in Vietnamese and organises a variety of information and cultural events in both countries.
"As well as language courses we are also organising integration courses where the Vietnamese migrants learn what they need to know here, like the basics about our legislation, about Czech culture and society, its values and customs which are totally different from those they know from their homeland," Hanoi Klub Chairman, Jiri Kocourek told Reuters TV.
The main problem the Vietnamese community faces is how to legalise their stay in the Czech Republic. One possibility is to set up a small business.
"Lots of former employees are trying to legalise their stay in the Czech Republic by becoming business license holders, which gives them automatic residency," Labour and Social Affairs Ministry spokesman Viktorie Plivova said.
The integration of Vietnamese people into the Czech community has proven relatively straightforward as the Vietnamese have been the traditional minority here since the seventies.
"Integration is progressing fine. We haven't registered any serious problems or incidents," Plivova added.
The Du Doy family live in Prague's Branik quarter. Mr. Du Doy was studying in Belarus and Mrs. Nguyen in Budapest, Hungary, when they were invited by Mrs. Nguyen's sister to live in the Czech Republic. In 1992 they decided to move and started their own business in the Czech capital.
The Du Doy parents concentrate their business in the Vietnamese community, helping newly arrived Vietnamese people to work and live in the Czech Republic.
"When we came in here, we founded the family firm - my sister and me, no one else," Mrs. Nguyen said, "We founded a company for trade and to help our countrymen," her husband added.
The Du Doy parents intend to return to Vietnam when they retire. Their son Hoang, who was born in Vietnam and speaks the language fluently plans to stay here.
"I would like to travel to some other countries to work, before I settle down somewhere, but I am convinced I want to get old here," Hoang, who speaks fluent Czech and is studying economics at Prague university, said.
Young Vietnamese children like Zuzana and Oliver, the daughter and niece of Mrs. Nguyen's sister, see their home as the Czech Republic now.
The number of foreigners living in the Czech Republic more than doubled in the period from 2004 to 2010 when it grew from 195,394 to 424,419. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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