Mr. John Sidney McCain III (Born August 29, 1936) is an American politician who currently serves as the senior United States Sebator from Arizona, in that office since 1987. He was the Republican nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election, which he lost to Barack Obama.
McCain followed his father and grandfather, both four-star admirals, into the United States Navy and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He became a naval aviator and flew ground-attack aircraft from air carriers. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fore. While McCain was on a bombing mission over Hanoi in October 1967, he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of war until 1973. McCain experienced episodes of torture and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. The wounds that he sustained during war have left him with lifelong physical disabilities.
He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981 and moved to Arizona, where he entered politics. In 1982, McCain was elected to the U.S House of Representatives, where he served two terms. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986 and easily won re-election five times, most recently in 2016.
Since 1979, the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) had provided a safe and legal alternative to illegal departures from Vietnam by boat or overland through Cambodia. The program, which had operated from the American Embassy in Bangkok and at a site in Sai Gon, successfully processed over 523,000 Vietnamese for admission to the U.S. as refugees, immigrants, and parolees. It reunited nearly 249,000 family members in the United States and provided resettlement to some 4,600 former U.S. Government employees. More than 89,700 Amerasian children and accompanying family members have been admitted to the United States since 1988 in a special ODP subprogram, along with some 167,000 former re-education camp detainees and their immediate family members under another special program begun in 1989.
The Orderly Departure Program office in Thailand was closed at the end of FY 1999.
Prior to April, 1995, the unmarried adult sons and daughters of re-education camp detainees had been allowed to process as derivative refugees under ODP, if they were accompanying a refugee parent, or were following to join that parent. But the State Department changed its policy in April, 1995. Perhaps the change was part of an effort to move toward normalization of relations with Vietnam and close the refugee admissions program. Whatever the reason, after April 1995, the unmarried sons and daughters of re-education camp detainees were denied admission to the US as derivative refugees. some were able to come to the US as refugees and derivative refugees through the State Department’s “Orderly Departure Program”, “ODP”.
In 1997, Senator John McCain (R-Az), sponsored a bill which later became law, that restored derivative refugee status for those affected by this change in policy. However, in implementing the new law, the State Department continued to deny admission to two groups of persons who should have otherwise qualified, the unmarried adult sons and daughters of widows or widowers of re-education camp prisoners, and the unmarried adult sons and daughters of re-education camp detainees who had been processed and settled into the U.S. as immigrants, rather than as refugees.
On May 30, 2002, President Bush signed a renewal and extension of the McCain Amendment, Public Law 107-185. The law provides derivative refugee status to the adult sons and daughters of Vietnamese re-education camp detainees under the Orderly Departure Program (ODP).
Sources:
1. Wikipedia
2. US Department of State
