The Houston Democrat says in a letter to the State Department that protection of individuals' basic rights "must be a rock of our foreign policy and we cannot tolerate the kind of abuses that continue to go on in Vietnam."
The Vietnamese ambassador to the U.S. said this summer the two governments had agreed in principle to establish a consulate in Houston.
Census figures show about 85,000 Vietnamese people live in Houston, making it the third-largest Vietnamese community in the U.S.
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