U.S., Vietnam Unfairly Treat Boat People Seeking a Home

[O.C. Register, March 22, 1998, Commentary, p. 3. Response to the article "U.S. opens door to Vietnamese" published in the O.C. Register on Monday, March 9, 1998]

By Lan Quoc Nguyen, Esq., Chairman
Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers (LAVAS)

The article, "U.S. opens door to Vietnamese" [news, March 9] contains numerous flaws and does not reflect both sides of the story.  These flaws are apparent in almost every line of the article.

The story tries to conceal the fact that the Clinton administration's recent actions in processing the refugee claims of former boat people in Vietnam are only an attempt to defuse opposition to the administration's intention to waive the Jackson-Vanik condition for Vietnam in disregard of the existing U.S. laws. What remains untold is that both Vietnamese and U.S. governments took turn to stall a refugee-processing program, known as Resettlement Opportunity for Resettlement for Returnees, or ROVR, which was implemented pursuant to a bilateral agreement signed by both countries in June of 1996. The recent announcements by both countries do not necessarily change the prospect of any former boat person leaving Vietnam under the program.

The Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which has been U.S. law since 1974, prohibits the United States from granting certain economic benefits to or subsidizing American companies doing business in some communist countries that do not allow their people to freely emigrate.  This law was aimed at encouraging those countries to allow people of special interest to the United States to leave their countries according to the U.S. immigration laws.

Under ROVR, some 18,000 boat people have returned to Vietnam from various refugee camps in Southeast Asia in reliance upon the promise of the U.S. government that they would be interviewed in Vietnam for possible resettlement pursuant to the existing U.S. refugee criteria known as Lautenberg Amendment.  Once returned, they learned that the U.S. government was not there to interview them and they were at the mercy of the Vietnamese government from which they had fled.

When it became apparent that the Jackson-Vanik amendment would block the administration's plan to normalize economic relations with the Vietnamese Communist regime and implementation of the ROVR program would be the main obstacle, the Clinton administration hastily announced that it would interview those applicants and the Vietnamese government agreed that it would waive the exit permit requirement for these applicants prior to their interviews with the U.S. officers.  These seemingly well-intended announcements do not change the reality facing these people - the Vietnamese government still retains unfettered control in granting the exit permits.

In the face of this, the Clinton administration proudly informed Congress and the nation that Vietnam has removed any obstacle for the ROVR program and thus deserves the waiver of the Jackson-Vanik condition.  The U.S. Congress is not so naive and it is considering various options to block the waiver until the Vietnamese regime lives up to its promise to the United States.

What prompted the United States to take the initiative in designing the ROVR program in the first place was because the screening process was utterly flawed with widespread problems such as corruption, arbitrariness, violence, brutality, inconsistency or disregard of existing international laws. The entire screening process quickly became a blatant mockery of the international justice.

In the face of such travesty of justice, most people were willing to die in the camps rather than to return to Vietnam.  Many of them actually committed suicide to prove that they did not flee Vietnam for a better life.  Bloodshed had become commonplace in various camps. 

At the height of this explosive situation, the U.S. Congress threatened to cut off funding for any repatriation program unless the people were re-screened according to the existing international or U.S. laws.

The criteria for screening these former boat people was not any less stringent than the existing asylum laws. In fact, the Lautenberg Amendment had been the standard of U.S. asylum laws for several years prior to the inception of ROVR.  The strong feelings from all sides involved in this fiasco were attributable to the fact that the U.S. government has again betrayed the Vietnamese people.

Since then, there have been only a few people ever left Vietnam under the program, not hundreds as indicated by the article.  Many have been approved for resettlement to the United States, but it remains to be seen how long it would take for any of them to actually leave the country. The estimate of 10 weeks, as stated in the article, is rather unrealistic.

The challenge to the U.S. foreign policy toward Vietnam is to live up to the spirit of the laws of this land and to respect the dignity of the promise of the United States of America.