NEW ORLEANS — They came here seeking refuge, but the past few years have brought unexpected hardship to the tightly knit Vietnamese fishing community.
They arrived after the fall of Saigon in 1975, lured by the city’s tropical climate and strong Catholic heritage. Shrimping and fishing in the Gulf Coast’s bountiful bayous was one of the few familiar touchstones for these mostly unskilled laborers with little English.
An estimated 20,000 Vietnamese fishermen and shrimpers live along the Gulf Coast — about half of the total fishing community — and many more work at the seafood processing plants, wholesalers, and po-boy shops found at every traffic light.
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