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Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
California's economy is already getting hit by immigration raids
As the crackdown on undocumented workers in California approaches a third month, researchers say the effects on the state's economy are already showing. Since early June, Los Angeles has been roiled by the Trump administration's immigration sweeps. The raids rendered some L.A. neighborhoods ghost towns, with businesses shuttered and customers few and far between, as people stayed home out of fear of being targeted. Even as mass street arrests appear to have slowed, economists warn that continued disruptions could hobble many businesses that rely on immigrant labor. Even those not reliant could see ripple effects, as a lack of such labor disrupts productivity and delays projects, weighing on California's gross domestic product and causing increases in food prices for the rest of the United States. 'If it's true that we are going into a phase in which a lot of these workers are either deported, or scared enough that they won't go to work, this will be a massive impact,' said Giovanni Peri, an international economics professor at UC Davis. Of course, the state's economy is massive — the equivalent to the fourth largest in the world if it were a country — so it would take a lot to derail it. But the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids are targeting a crucial motor to the Golden State's success. Economists and business leaders are starting to gather indicators of the actual effects. 'My gut check is, this is bad,' said Todd Sorensen, a professor in the economics department at UC Riverside. 'We will need to see how these trends continue over the rest of the summer.' One of the first bits of macroeconomic evidence to come in suggests an unusually large number of people didn't go to work when the raids began. An analysis of U.S. census data from late May and early June by researchers with UC Merced's Community and Labor Center found that the number of people reporting to work in the private sector in California decreased by 3.1% — a downturn so significant it is only recently matched by the period when people stayed home from work during the COVID-19 lockdown. In the rest of the country, the number reporting to work in the private sector increased. California's rate of decline in work was highest among noncitizen women, with a loss of about 8.6%, or 1 in 12 women not reporting to work. But, notably, citizens also showed a marked decline. 'If people are afraid to leave their house, they aren't spending money, which generates less business,' said Edward Flores, associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the UC Merced labor center. 'There should be a lot of concern for the downstream effects.' Economists say the work that undocumented immigrants do has a multiplier effect. Their work output generates other jobs. Take a construction site, for example. If immigrant workers are hired as brick layers, their work supports hiring supervisors, engineers, electricians, plumbers and others. If the undocumented workforce shrinks, job opportunities for U.S.-born workers could dry up as well, and wages could deflate, if past studies of the effect of targeted mass raids are any indication. 'Immigrant workers are the backbone of the economy,' said Michael Clemens, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. A June report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute found that, based on their wage contributions to the economy alone, undocumented workers generate nearly 5% of California's gross domestic product. That proportion rises to 9% when ripple effects of their labor are added. With 2.28 million undocumented immigrants living in California, they represent 8% of workers in the state. And the population has deep roots, with nearly two-thirds having lived in the state for over a decade. Their total contribution in local, state and federal taxes is $23 billion annually, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. If California's undocumented workers were erased from the economy, researchers calculated the state's agricultural industry would contract by 14% and the construction industry would shrink by nearly 16%. The study projects a loss of $278 billion to California's economy as the upper figure of the financial damage. These numbers represent the most drastic scenario. It's difficult to know what the actual toll will be, said Abby Raisz, of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute: 'That's the million-dollar question.' How long the raids persist matters, said economist Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics. Take the example of a power outage, Thornberg said. If there's a power outage for two days, that's not a loss of two days of economic activity, since people just catch up on missed shopping and other activities. 'It is business delayed, not business canceled,' he said in an email. 'If the blackout goes for two months — well, now we can assume some of it will end up being business lost, and that's when the real economic impacts start to creep in,' Thornberg said. There are some industries in which the effects are clear, Thornberg said, citing car washes, which have been raided repeatedly. Early reports from farmers are also not optimistic, with groups reporting severe labor shortages during peak harvesting season for many crops. Bryan Little of the California Farm Bureau described how a strawberry producer in Ventura County lost most of his crop after workers stayed home. Little said these labor shortages are becoming more frequent and could drive up prices sharply on the produce California ships to the rest of the country. 'People were terribly upset over the price of eggs in the fall and winter,' Little said. 'It'll be interesting to see when you start getting prices like that on virtually every item.' Local hotels and other businesses that rely on tourism are bracing for adverse effects. Their customers are getting scared away by the raids. These businesses are also exposed to potential labor shortages because they are heavily reliant on the immigrant workforce. Visit California, the state's marketing agency, in May projected international visits would decline by 9.2% in 2025, due to negative sentiment toward the Trump administration's trade policies. Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Fullerton), whose district covers swaths of northern Orange County, said there has been low turnout at summer concerts, area car shows and other events. She described deserted city centers in downtown Santa Ana and low foot traffic in Little India in Artesia. Artesia's mayor, Ali Taj, said the impact on the city's sales tax revenue is going to be 'horrific.' 'The message here is please stop, stop, stop,' he told a news conference at Buena Park City Hall, where local officials and business leaders discussed the effects of the raids. 'Enough is enough.' Downtown L.A. business groups have said the Fashion District has seen a 30% drop in traffic. 'It will help tremendously when there are reduced ICE operations,' said Nella McOsker, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn., which represents the interests of more than 300 businesses, trade associations and nonprofits. 'That will help at least all of us who care about downtown to be in a position [where] we can change perception and really call for people to come back.' The Hispanic Construction Council estimates the country was already dealing with a nationwide construction workforce shortage of 500,000 workers. George Carrillo, chief executive of the council, said that construction projects were 14% behind schedule when Trump took office, but that lag has grown to 22% under the Trump administration, as deportation threats have weakened the workforce. Further labor shortages in the construction industry, in which the workforce is 61% immigrant and 26% undocumented, will hinder wildfire recovery in Los Angeles and work on other critical infrastructure across the U.S., including levies, bridges and dams, Carrillo said. In California, major airport expansion projects are planned in Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as new soccer stadiums and medical centers. Undocumented workers do not have political representatives, so the business leaders that depend on their hard work need to stand up and let the White House know the economic cost, Carrillo said. 'When it came to tariffs and it was affecting the auto industry, guess what, the Big Three [automakers] called the president and said 'You need to stop this.' And he did, and he backed off of the tariffs,' he said. 'It's the same thing here, but for some reason, we feel like we can't stand up.'
San Francisco Chronicle
22-07-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Trump's immigration raids are wreaking havoc on California's economy and schools
The Trump administration's unrestrained assault on immigrants has battered California's economy and driven down attendance at its schools, a pair of recent reports contend. Taken together, the studies by researchers at UC Merced and Stanford University assert that President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda is having cascading effects that extend beyond California's under-siege immigrant communities. Examining monthly population totals from the U.S. Census Bureau, UC Merced found that nearly 465,000 California workers withdrew from the labor force the week of June 8, when federal immigration authorities descended on Los Angeles-area neighborhoods and work sites to arrest nearly 2,800 people. The drop in workers depressed private-sector employment by 3.1% from May. In the past four decades, only the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Recession saw greater monthly declines in private-sector workers, said associate sociology professor Edward Orozco Flores, the report 's lead author and faculty director at UC Merced's Community and Labor Center, a public research institution based in the San Joaquin Valley. The data can't explicitly say which workers stayed home or were laid off and furloughed, and doesn't indicate which industries experienced the greatest declines. But the effects were not limited to Southern California, Flores said. 'Geographically, there was no statistical difference between L.A. and the rest of the state,' he said. The reason, he surmised, was the immigration enforcement tactics on display in the state. Along with sending federal immigration agents and thousands of military troops to Los Angeles, the Trump administration has dispatched masked immigration agents to health clinics, schools, home improvement stores and immigration courts in other parts of the state, including San Francisco, where protesters clung to an unmarked ICE van leaving a courthouse earlier this month. 'What's become clear is this administration is making a remarkable spectacle around immigration enforcement,' Flores said. 'The majority of it (the worker loss) seems some kind of response to a very visible display of immigration enforcement.' Trump's California crackdown exacted a geo-specific toll in the world's fifth-largest economy, the UC Merced report shows. While the state's labor force declined significantly, the U.S. as a whole experienced a half-percent increase of roughly 563,000 workers between May and June. Most of the evaporated workers in California — 271,541, or 58% — were American citizens. Flores said there are several reasons why this would be the case, and they revolve around how interwoven the immigrant population is into the state economy. When crops go unharvested by predominantly immigrant farmworkers, the rest of the agricultural supply chain is paralyzed. When immigrants stop shopping at supermarkets and retail stores, managers reduce their employees' hours. When the immigrants who make up a significant proportion of in-home caregivers are too afraid to leave their homes, the working adults in those homes also can't go to work. 'We have long known that noncitizens do not work in a vacuum,' Flores said. 'When noncitizens are not working, it harms the entire supply chain.' Gov. Gavin Newsom noted the implications for California's economy earlier this month, when he called for an end to the raids in Los Angeles. 'Instead of targeting dangerous criminals, federal agents are detaining U.S. citizens, ripping families apart, and vanishing people to meet indiscriminate arrest quotas without regard to due process and constitutional rights that protect all of us from cruelty and injustice,' Newsom said in a July 7 statement. 'Their actions imperil the fabric of our democracy, society, and economy.' Even before Trump's recent escalation in California, parents in the state's agricultural epicenter were keeping their children home from school at alarmingly irregular rates in response to heightened immigration enforcement, according to a Stanford report released in June. On Jan. 7 — a day after Congress certified Trump's election victory — Border Patrol agents from the agency's El Centro sector conducted an unusual immigration sweep 300 miles north of their post in rural Kern County. Their Operation Return to Sender resulted in 78 arrests and about 1,000 detentions, criticism by Biden administration officials, an ACLU lawsuit and a spike in student absenteeism at southern valley school districts touched by the dragnet. Stanford Graduate School of Education professor Thomas S. Dee examined three years of daily attendance figures from five school districts in four counties — Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare — whose districts serve more than 500,000 students, more than 70% of whom are Hispanic. He found that, in January and February, absences jumped by an average of 22% across all the districts and by about 30% among the youngest students — those in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. 'That's a period where kids are learning really critical foundational skills, such as how to read,' Dee said. As with the economy, the effects are manifesting with nonimmigrant students and families. Jesus Martinez, executive director of the Central Valley Immigrant Integration Collaborative, said the Fresno-based nonprofit's educational partners have reported widespread fears among all their students, including U.S.-born students with immigrant parents and friends. 'It extends beyond the undocumented individual,' he said. Some 5.5 million U.S.-born children live with a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant, according to a Center for Migration Studies analysis of census data. The California Legislature has considered 23 immigration enforcement-related bills this year, seven of which concern schools. Bills to deny access to federal immigration authorities to schools if they don't have a warrant or a court order and to require schools to notify parents and staff when immigration authorities are on school grounds require two-thirds support to pass. Dee said public schools are still grappling with a post-pandemic knot of chronic absenteeism, sagging enrollment and declining funding, problems he expects the raids to exacerbate. He said fall enrollment figures will help indicate how California's schools, whose funding is tied to enrollment, responded to the Trump administration's immigration incursions. 'What we're seeing could eventually become reduced enrollment if families flee the region,' he said. 'There are reasons to be concerned.' Dee also acknowledged the Trump administration would likely be untroubled by this result, as another one of its priorities is dismantling the public education system. 'It seems consistent with other ways in which the administration has been creating disruptions and even chaos in education,' he said, noting the administration's 'evisceration' of the Department of Education and its threats to Title I funding, intended to address achievement gaps among lower-income students. As for what happens next, Flores pointed to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Along with adding as much as $6 trillion to the national debt, Trump's signature domestic policy achievement will supercharge immigration enforcement by $170 billion and turn U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country's largest law enforcement agency. 'No one has a crystal ball, but I think it would be reasonable to expect that this trend will continue and possibly even worsen,' Flores said. 'If this is the effect we're seeing due to the escalation of June 8 and we can expect further escalations, it is difficult to imagine that things simply go back.'
San Francisco Chronicle
23-06-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Mass deportations could cost California in these surprising ways
As the federal government ramps up deportation efforts, a new study by Northern California researchers sought to quantify how much mass deportations would cost the state by measuring undocumented immigrants' economic contributions. The study, conducted by researchers at the San Francisco think tank Bay Area Council Economic Institute and UC Merced, projected that mass deportations of California's almost 2.3 million undocumented immigrants could cost the state's economy $275 billion through a loss of labor, economic output, small business job creation and consumer spending among other impacts. The Trump administration says it wants to deport an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who live in the United States to secure borders against immigrants who have committed crimes and because unauthorized immigrants are a drain on public resources, although people in the country illegally are generally ineligible for federal benefits. Still, Trump initially struggled to get his agenda off the ground, with the number of deportations relatively flat before beginning to climb in March through May, partly because fewer people were nabbed at the border. Immigration arrests and detentions have spiked from January to May, however. Anti-immigration advocates have argued that a large supply of undocumented labor depresses wages for some American workers, although there is substantial disagreement about the extent to which that's true. Supporters of immigration argue that undocumented laborers tend to take jobs Americans don't want, especially seasonal farmwork. The report does not answer the question of whether undocumented immigrants cost the country more than they contribute to it. But it found that undocumented immigrants in California are more likely to be working age and employed than native-born residents, with an estimated 72% working compared to 67% for U.S.-born residents. About 1.5 million undocumented immigrants work in California, constituting 8% of the state's workforce, the study estimated. There is no official count of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. As such, researchers, including in this study, use what's called the 'residual method' to estimate it. That involves subtracting the estimated legally present foreign-born population in the U.S. from the total foreign-born population counted by the U.S. Census Bureau to get an estimated unauthorized population. Used by the Department of Homeland Security for its official unauthorized population statistics, as well as research organizations Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute, the method is generally accepted as the best way to estimate these populations. The Bay Area Council Economic Institute is the research arm of the Bay Area Council, an advocacy organization for businesses across the Bay Area. Dennis Feehan, a UC Berkeley demographics professor and quantitative social science methodology expert, reviewed the report's methodology and said the methods used seemed reasonable and typical of this kind of work, although he said it is challenging to estimate the size of the undocumented population. The researchers inferred that someone was likely present legally if they met certain criteria such as being born abroad to American parents, being employed in military or government positions, receiving government assistance such as food stamps or working in some jobs requiring professional licenses, such as engineers or nurses, explained the Institute's research director and report co-author Abby Raisz. The undocumented immigrant population estimate includes both immigrants present without any kind of legal authorization and those with temporary legal protections that could be revoked, such as beneficiaries of the Obama-era program Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, which is given to nationals of certain countries. The researchers measured economic impact in three main ways: First, the direct impact through wages that undocumented workers earn and goods and services they produce. Second, indirect impact such as when employers purchase materials used by undocumented labor. Third, induced impact through consumer spending. Researchers said undocumented workers generate 5% of the state's overall economic activity through their labor, a number that rises to 9% after factoring in ripple effects of their spending and labor. 'We have been reliant on immigration as a source of population growth and driver of labor force growth for many years,' Raisz said. The report found that California would have lost 85,000 people last year if not for immigration. The state instead gained about 40,000 people. 'One thing I want to drive home is how embedded folks are in the state and communities,' Raisz said, pointing to the report finding that almost half of undocumented immigrants in California have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years. The study found that almost 11% of all small businesses are owned by undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants also pay an estimated $10.6 billion in state and local taxes annually and almost $13 billion in federal taxes, the report stated, despite being excluded from most federal benefits. The economic impact of deportations won't be equally felt. It'll be most acute in regions with a greater share of undocumented immigrants — including the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley, Inland Empire and Los Angeles — and in industries reliant on undocumented workers including housekeeping, agriculture, construction, food service, warehousing and manufacturing. 'Those are pretty staggering numbers,' Raisz said. 'If we lose this workforce, we're not harvesting crops, we're not building homes. These are things we need to survive as an economy and a society.' Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young, an assistant professor of public health at UC Merced who co-wrote the report, said that the economic costs of mass deportation don't just come from the removal of individuals from the U.S. It also comes from absenteeism from schools and work and the loss in productivity due to fear after immigration raids on workplaces, she said. That same chilling effect can apply to people going out to eat or heading downtown, Young said, thus reducing spending and economic activity. 'The term mass deportation leads people to think we're going to see one big workplace raid,' she said. But, she said, 'these economic hits would be the cumulative effect of lots of small enforcement actions… Overall, we stand to lose a lot because of increased enforcement even if we don't see it immediately happening in our backyard right now.'
Daily Mail
31-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
The California region where 5 million residents face growing health risk
One of America's richest farming hubs is facing a hidden threat that could jeopardize the health of local residents and the future existence of the land. California 's Central Valley and its neighboring drylands grow a third of the country's crops and power a multibillion-dollar economy. But scientists say the region is now confronting the escalating danger of dust storms driven by climate change, unchecked development, and vast swaths of idle farmland. A major study published in Communications Earth and Environment in April found that 88 percent of dust storms caused by human activity — so-called 'anthropogenic dust events' — were linked to fallowed farmland between 2008 and 2022. With hundreds of thousands more acres expected to sit idle by 2040, researchers warn the crisis is only beginning. 'Dust events are a big problem, especially in the Central Valley, and have not gotten enough attention,' said UC Merced professor Adeyemi Adebiyi in a May 2025 university report. The phenomenon is hitting five major regions: the San Joaquin Valley, Salton Trough, Sonora Desert, Mojave Desert, and Owens-Mono Lake area — home to roughly 5 million Californians. Experts at UC Dust, a multi-university research initiative focused on the issue, say the relationship between degraded land and dust is dangerously self-perpetuating. 'There is a two-way linkage between dust emission and landscape degradation, with one reinforcing the other, leading to potentially irreversible shifts in California's dryland ecosystems,' the group wrote in its latest update. While some dust-control efforts exist, scientists say they're not enough—and warn that without more intervention, the storms will only increase (Pictured: Aerial shot of suburban residential streets in Bakersfield, California) Dust has always been part of life in inland California, but human activity is making it more frequent—and more hazardous. The storms have already caused massive disruptions, ranging from serious health impacts to deadly crashes. In 1991, an agricultural dust storm led to a 164-car pileup that killed 17 people in the San Joaquin Valley. And in 1977, wind gusts nearing 200 mph in Kern County triggered a destructive storm that killed five and caused $34 million in damages, according to KVPR-FM. Today, many storms are so large they can be seen from space. One of the most serious concerns is Valley fever—a potentially fatal infection caused by fungal spores that live in the soil and spread through the air during dust events. The illness causes symptoms like coughing, chest pain, and shortness of breath. Cases are rising fast: California logged 12,637 cases in 2024, the highest on record. The first four months of 2025 have already surpassed the same period the year before. A Nature study cited in the new report found Valley fever cases jumped 800 per cent in the state between 2000 and 2018. 'Valley fever risk increases as the amount of dust increases,' said Katrina Hoyer, an immunology professor at UC Merced. Central California — where much of the state's fallowed land is located — is now considered a hotspot for the disease. And while some dust control efforts are in place, they've been limited and costly, according to UC Dust. 'The future of dust in California is still uncertain,' Adebiyi said. 'But our report suggests dust storms will likely increase.'
Los Angeles Times
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
In Vietnam, an unlikely outpost for Chicano culture
HO CHI MINH CITY — When Nguyen Phuoc Loc first started dabbling in Chicano culture eight years ago, it was simply because he liked the way that the loose clothing offset his large head. Today, he considers himself Chicano through and through. The 30-year-old Vietnamese barber has never been to the United States. Yet he has filled his life and work with tributes to Mexican American identity and culture. The back of the barbershop he manages features a mural of the Virgen de Guadalupe, a cactus plant and a Mexican flag. Sneakers hang by their laces from barbed wire, dangling above two motorbikes. Even his shaved head is covered in the Gothic black letters long popular in Chicano culture that spell out: Family, Loyalty, L.A. The ink on his crown — a large number 6 — signifies his status as the sixth member of a small but increasingly visible community: a local band of barbers and tattoo artists who call themselves Viet Chicanos. 'In the beginning, I was just copying the older guys, their style and all,' said Loc, 30. 'But over time, I started to feel that it really fit who I am. It happened gradually, like it seeped into me.' Fashion aside, the culture has given Loc a sense of belonging, and motivation to work harder at his craft. He began watching movies steeped in Chicano culture, such as 'American Me' and 'Blood In Blood Out,' while using his limited English and translation apps to read about the movement online. He also started learning Spanish on Duolingo, but said that the language has been more difficult to pick up. 'If someone comes in from L.A., I'll ask them everything I can about Chicano culture,' he said. 'It's like they're tuned in to the exact frequency I've been on.' Once a derogatory name for Mexican Americans, the term 'Chicano' was reclaimed as a political identity during the 1960s, born out of their fight for civil rights in the American Southwest. Since then, symbols of Chicano identity, such as oversized streetwear, elaborate tattoos and lowrider cars, have permeated mainstream culture. Subcultures influenced by Chicano imagery have cropped up in other parts of Asia, such as Thailand, the Philippines and most notably Japan, where a local love of lowriders emerged as early as the 1990s. Within conservative Asian cultures, the adventurous clothing and accessories of Chicano culture are a large part of the appeal, said Ignacio Lopez Calvo, a professor at UC Merced who has studied the spread of lowrider culture in Japan. 'It's a way of defying traditional societal norms,' he said. 'They see Chicano culture, this rebelliousness, resilience, independence, and it's a way to express themselves, find an identity and create community.' Berta Delgado Melgosa, a Spanish writer who has studied Chicano literature written by veterans of the Vietnam War, says Chicano soldiers there identified with certain parts of Vietnamese culture, while Chicano activists protested the racial inequality of the draft at home. 'When the Mexican American soldiers arrived in Vietnam, they saw people that resembled them: their facial features, their clothes, even their hats. They were poor, worked in the fields, and they also had a great sense of community, and more importantly, they were also fighting for their lives against U.S. imperialism,' she said. Vietnam's own Chicano 'movement' began 10 years ago, when Nguyen Huynh Thanh Liem opened a barbershop dedicated to Chicano culture in Ho Chi Minh City. Now, the 38-year-old runs about 20 barbershops across the country, including three Chicano-style shops, and trains barbers such as Loc. Tran Quoc Viet, a 37-year-old used car salesman, became a regular customer of Liem's Barber Shop shortly after the first one opened in 2015. Back then, he was intrigued by the unusual aesthetic. While he never adopted the style of baggy clothing or tattoos, he was impressed with how the barbers pulled it off. 'At the time it could be called rebellious,' he said. 'There was something bold and edgy about it, which made me curious.' Many of the Vietnamese attracted to Chicano culture attribute their initial admiration to the bright colors and bold contrasts that Liem showcases in his signature shops. The unconventional flair of the barbershops gives them a unique charm, and in the last few years, social media has helped the community boost its profile and gain a wider audience beyond Vietnam. Liem has more than 680,000 followers on TikTok, where he posts about Chicanos in Vietnam. Loc has 1.2 million TikTok followers; his most popular videos each have about 30 million views. However, that attention hasn't all been positive, particularly among older generations of Vietnamese, who are inclined to associate tattoos with gangs and violence. 'In Vietnam, when people see something new or unfamiliar, especially from another culture, they don't always welcome it,' said Nguyen Van Thao, a 35-year-old tattoo artist who works at another one of Liem's shops. 'People often mock or even insult us on social media, saying things like, 'You're Vietnamese, why don't you just be Vietnamese? Why do you have to be like that?'' Thao began exploring Chicano-style tattoos with Liem when the two of them met 10 years ago. At that time, their frame of reference came mostly from online images. As they delved deeper into Chicano culture, Thao found that many other aspects resonated with him, such as the emphasis on family, resilience and respect. 'People often ask me why I chose this culture, but the truth is, I didn't choose it. I discovered it, and it felt more like it chose me,' Thao said. 'People come here, they hang out, they get inked, they support what we do. They helped me turn my life around.' The stigma associated with tattoos and streetwear in Vietnam has played a role in keeping the core community small. While information about Chicano culture has increased, those who are steadfast enough to withstand the stares and learn about the underlying values are the ones who last, Thao said. He speculated that such social scrutiny puts undue pressure on women who have explored the Chicano community and decided not to stay. 'There are actually a lot of people who do like the culture — I know many who really do — but they're hesitant,' he said. 'They're afraid of being stared at, judged, talked about, attacked. They can't handle the criticism, so they give up.' About 10 dedicated members of the community and their families often cycle in and out of Liem's flagship salon, Viet Monster Hood, to work and socialize. The Viet Chicanos are wary of attracting the wrong type of followers as well, who may be in pursuit of a different kind of lifestyle. Despite their fierce appearances, many of the barbers who work at Liem's shops are soft-spoken and humble and reject any perceptions of violence and crime. They say they want to perpetuate cultural appreciation, rather than appropriation. 'We're just inheriting this culture from a distance. And in doing so, we choose to carry on the beautiful parts,' Thao said. 'We believe we can succeed this way, so that when people look at this culture, they see it connected to real success. And they see that the people who follow it are decent people, and we don't have to be gangsters to be considered a true Chicano.' When tattoo artist Michael Phan, 25, moved from Munich, Germany, to work for Thao two years ago, his only thought about Chicano culture was the superficial notion that it is associated with gangs. But his time at Viet Monster Hood changed that. Now, he likes to cite a quote from 'Blood In Blood Out' that's framed on the wall at the salon: 'Chicano is not a color, but it's the way you think and the way you live.' 'I love that, because it means you don't have to be in America to embrace it,' he said. Learning from Thao has helped Phan grow his social media following and his business, though his clients are still mostly foreigners. While he's learned that Chicano and Vietnamese culture have a lot of similarities — such as prioritizing family — he believes that Vietnamese, including his relatives, may take longer to come around. For 60-year-old Nguyen Thi Bich, who was taught that people with tattoos are dangerous, stepping foot in Viet Monster Hood was intimidating at first. However, she relaxed after seeing how cheerful the barbers were when teasing her 7-year-old grandson. 'When we went to other barbershops where people were grumpy, my little grandson got scared and didn't want to go back,' she said. 'Now I have been around people with tattoos, getting to know them, I realized there are all kinds of people everywhere.' While she's still unfamiliar with what Chicano means, she's grown fond of the environment at Viet Monster Hood, where decals that say 'Vietnamese Gang,' are everywhere, hip-hop blares in the background and even the shop bulldog, Simba, has drawn-on tattoos. 'This shop feels like one of those places where young people go to rap,' she said. 'I've been watching rap on TV lately, and I quite enjoy it.'
