12/2/2008

Thirty years after the fall of the Saigon government, Vietnamese Americans celebrate the fact that they have moved far beyond their refugee origins and become successful economic and political players in U.S. society.

 The 20th century is often called the “Age of the Uprooted.” A prime example of this “uprooting” is the Vietnamese refugee crisis which unfolded in the mid-1970s after the end of the Vietnam War. The crisis resulted in both the creation of the modern Vietnamese American community and a fundamental reformulation of U.S. refugee policy. 

The 1.2 million-strong Vietnamese American community reflects upon this dramatic historical journey, which marks ten years since the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam, and 30 years since the fall of the Saigon government, which initiated the ‘first wave’ of Vietnamese refugees. Moreover, Vietnamese Americans celebrate the fact that they have moved far beyond their refugee origins and become successful economic and political players in U.S. society.

Waves of Vietnamese Refugees

  In 1975, in the closing days of the Vietnam War, about 130,000 Vietnamese who were generally high-skilled and well-educated, and who feared reprisals for their close ties to Americans, were airlifted by the United States government to bases in the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam. They were later transferred to refugee centers in California, Arkansas, Florida, and Pennsylvania for up to six months of education and cultural training to facilitate their assimilation into their new society. 

Although initially not welcomed by Americans (only 36 percent in a national poll favored Vietnamese immigration), President Gerald Ford signed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act of 1975, which granted the refugees special status to enter the country and established a domestic resettlement program. The bill was amended in 1977 under the sponsorship of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) to permit refugees to adjust to a parolee status and later become permanent residents. In order to prevent “ghettoism” by concentrating resettled Vietnamese in one geographic area, refugees were initially dispersed across the country. This deliberate scattering of the first influx of refugees did not last, as most eventually moved to California and Texas.

  This first wave of refugees was followed by a second major exodus out of Vietnam that began in 1978 and lasted into the mid-1980s, totaling almost 2 million people (3 million if Laotians and Cambodians are included) who fled communist re-education camps and the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam. This group of refugees swamped the neighboring Southeast Asian countries Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong – countries of ‘first asylum’ – at a rate that ranged from 2,000 to as many as 50,000 refugees per month.

Thousands of these desperate asylum seekers fled Vietnam in rickety wooden boats and would become known as ‘Boat People.’ Overwhelmed first-asylum countries resorted to expelling the Boat People. President Jimmy Carter responded by ordering the 7th Fleet to seek out vessels in distress in the South China Sea. His Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, told Congress in July 1979 that:

  We are a nation of refugees. Most of us can trace our presence here to the turmoil or oppression of another time and another place. Our nation has been immeasurably enriched by this continuing process. We will not turn our backs on our traditions. We must meet the commitments we have made to other nations and to those who are suffering. In doing so, we will also be renewing our commitments to our ideals. 

However, it was evident that U.S. refugee policies, which had been created in the aftermath of World War II, were not adequate to handle the hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees seeking to enter the United States.

The Vietnamese Impact on U.S. Refugee Policy

  The United States was one of the original signatories of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first modern international agreement on asylum, as well as the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Yet the U.S. government only addressed refugee issues through ad hoc legislation (for Hungarian and Cuban refugees, for instance). The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) of 1952 contained no provisions expressly covering the resettlement of refugees. 

It wasn't until 1965 that Congress amended the INA to provide for the resettlement of refugees as a new category of ‘conditional entrants,’ defining ‘refugee’ only in terms of geography (from the Middle East) and political regime (from communist countries). Conditional entrants were capped at 17,400 annually. In 1968, the United States acceded to the 1967 United Nations Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but continued to use its own definition of ‘refugee.’ Finally, in June 1980 U.S. law was brought into compliance with the international definition of ‘refugee’. 

Recognizing that the Vietnamese refugee crisis was a world problem, the United Nations convened the First Geneva Conference on Indochinese Refugees in July 1979. The United States, together with the United Kingdom, Australia, France, and Canada, agreed to be a country of resettlement. In addition, first–asylum countries promised to continue receiving refugees and the communist Vietnamese government agreed to make efforts to stop illegal departures and to establish an Orderly Departure Program (ODP) under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The ODP involved interviews of released reeducation center detainees and their close family members in both the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, and in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. By the end of the program on September 30, 1994, the ODP allowed 167,000 Vietnamese former detainees (together with their family members) and 523,000 Vietnamese refugees, immigrants, and parolees to come to the United States. In addition, over 89,700 Amer-asian children with accompanying family members also were admitted.