1954 and 1975 Exodus
For nearly half a century, the world has witnessed two great Exodus by the Vietnamese who firmly believe in freedom and democracy. They are willing to risk their lives to secure freedom for their descendants. This determination has awakened human conscience.
The goals of the Vietnamese exodus are to search for freedom and to maintain the democracy and human rights for the nation. It is in line with the general progress of humanity. The Vietnamese expressed their determination to reject the communist regime that relied on foreign intrigue to occupy the North in 1954, and the South in 1975.
1954 Exodus
Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, the Geneva accord which ended the First Indochina War (1946-1954) divided Vietnam into 2 sections at the 17th parallel: the establishment of a communist state in the north (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam – known as North Vietnam ) and a separate state in the south (the Republic of Vietnam – also known as South Vietnam). With the founding of a communist government in the north, more than a million people moved south in the years 1954–1956. Their numbers included nearly 800,000 Vietnamese Roman Catholics, an estimated two-thirds of the total Roman Catholic population in the north. They quickly integrated into the new life in the Land of Freedom – South Vietnam.
1975 Exodus
In 1960, there was renewed conflict in South Vietnam. Anti-communist forces, supported by the United States, which eventually sent in over 500,000 troops, sought to halt the spread of Soviet and Chinese-backed communism in Southeast Asia. The war in Vietnam led to greater waves of displacement in all three Indochinese countries. Most of the displacement was internal, but in some cases it spilled across borders, as in the case of the ‘Delta Khmer’ who fled into Cambodia to escape the fighting in Vietnam. By the late 1960s, when the war was at its height, an estimated half of South Vietnam’s 20 million people had been internally displaced. The Paris Peace Agreement of January 27th 1973 brought a temporary end to the Vietnam conflict and opened the door for a greater role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which launched a program to assist displaced people in Vietnam and Laos.
In the final days before the fall of Saigon in April 1975, some 140,000 Vietnamese who were closely associated with the former South Vietnamese government were evacuated from the country and resettled in the United States. The US-organized evacuation was followed by a smaller exodus of Vietnamese who found their own way by boat to flee to neighboring Southeast Asian countries. By the end of 1975, some 5,000 Vietnamese arrived in Thailand, 4,000 in Hong Kong, 1,800 in Singapore and 1,250 in the Philippines. The UNHCR’s initial reaction was to treat these movements as the aftermath of war rather than the beginning of a new refugee crisis.
The discontentment with the new communist regime increased, so did the number of people fleeing the country. In July 1976, the government in Hanoi stripped the Provisional Revolutionary Government, which had been established in the south after the fall of Saigon, off any remaining autonomy it possessed and unified the country as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. It also embarked on a program of resettling urban dwellers in the countryside in so-called ‘new economic zones’. More than a million people were placed in ‘re-education camps’. Many died while tens of thousands were left in anguish in detention until the late 1980s. As time went by it also became clear that the prominence of the ethnic Vietnamese Chinese population in the private economic sector was contrary to the socialist vision of the new authorities. By early 1978, formal measures were being taken to expropriate businesses of private entrepreneurs, most of whom were ethnic Chinese Vietnamese.
Boat People
In 1977, about 15,000 Vietnamese sought asylum in Southeast Asian countries. By the end of 1978, the numbers fleeing by boat had quadrupled and 70 percent of these asylum seekers were Vietnamese of Chinese origin. Many more ethnic Chinese Vietnamese fled to China. They were mainly from northern Vietnam, where they had lived for decades, and they were mostly poor fishermen, artisans and peasants. China subsequently established a project to settle the refugees on state farms in southern China.
By the end of 1978 the problem had begun to reach alarming proportions, there were nearly 62,000 Vietnamese ‘boat people’ in refugee camps throughout Southeast Asia. Tens of thousands had crossed the border into Thailand. As the numbers grew, so did local hostility. Adding to the tension was the fact that several of the boats arriving on the shores of countries in Southeast Asia were not small wooden fishing craft but steel-hulled freighters chartered by regional smuggling syndicates and carrying over 2,000 people at a time. In November 1978, for example, a 1,500-tonne freighter, the Hai Hong, anchored at Port Klang, Malaysia, and requested permission to unload its human cargo of 2,500 Vietnamese. When the Malaysian authorities demanded that the boat be turned back to sea, the local UNHCR representative argued that the Vietnamese on board were considered to be ‘of concern to the Office of the UNHCR’. This position was reinforced by a cable from UNHCR headquarters suggesting that ‘in the future, unless there are clear indications to the contrary, boat cases from Viet Nam be considered prima facie of concern to UNHCR’. For more than a decade, Vietnamese who reached a UNHCR-administered camp were accorded prima facie refugee status and were given the opportunity of resettlement overseas. At the beginning of the Indochinese exodus in 1975, not a single country in the region had acceded to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol. None of the countries receiving Vietnamese boat people gave them permission to stay permanently and some would not even permit temporary refuge. Singapore refused to disembark any refugees who did not have guarantees of resettlement within 90 days. Malaysia and Thailand frequently resorted to pushing boats away from their coastlines. When Vietnamese boat arrivals escalated dramatically in 1979, with more than 54,000 arrivals in June alone, boat ‘pushbacks’ became routine and thousands of Vietnamese may have perished at sea as a result. By mid-1979, of the more than 550,000 Indochinese who had sought asylum in Southeast Asia since 1975, some 200,000 had been resettled and some 350,000 remained in first-asylum countries in the region. Over the previous six months, for every individual who moved on to resettlement, three more had arrived in the camps. At the end of June 1979, the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) —Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—issued a warning that they had reached the limit of their endurance and announced that they would not accept any new arrivals. ‘Pushbacks’ were in full speed and asylum was in jeopardy.
1979 International Conference on Refugees and Displaced Persons in Southeast Asia in Geneva
With the principle of asylum under direct threat, on 20 and 21 July 1979, 65 governments responded to an invitation from the UN Secretary-General to attend an international conference on Indochinese refugees in Geneva. The international commitments they made were several and significant. Worldwide resettlement pledges increased from 125,000 to 260,000.
As a result of the 1979 conference, the immediate crisis was averted. In what amounted to a three-way agreement between the countries of origin, the countries of first asylum and the countries of resettlement, the ASEAN countries promised to uphold commitments to provide temporary asylum as long as Viet Nam endeavoured to prevent illegal exits and to promote orderly departures, and as long as third countries accelerated the rate of resettlement. Indonesia and the Philippines agreed to establish regional processing centres to help resettle refugees more quickly and, with notable exceptions, pushbacks were halted. International resettlement, which had been taking place at the rate of around 9,000 per month in the first half of 1979, increased to around 25,000 per month in the latter half of the year. Between July 1979 and July 1982, more than 20 countries—led by the United States, Australia, France, and Canada—together resettled 623,800 Indochinese refugees. From 1980 to 1986, as resettlement out-paced declining arrivals, refugee officials began to speak with growing optimism about solving the regional crisis.
Orderly Departure Program (ODP)
For its part, Viet Nam agreed to make every effort to halt illegal departures and to follow through on a Memorandum of Understanding that it had signed with UNHCR in May 1979 on the establishment of the Orderly Departure Program (ODP). Under the terms of that arrangement, the Vietnamese authorities undertook to authorize the exit of those Vietnamese wishing to leave the country for family reunion and other humanitarian reasons, while UNHCR coordinated with resettlement countries to obtain entry visas. Although the program started slowly, it gradually gathered momentum. By 1984, annual departures under the program had risen to 29,100, exceeding the regional boat arrival total of 24,865.
The U.S. government allowed the immigration of Vietnamese to the U.S. through the UNHCR’s ODP. There were three categories in which Vietnamese could qualify for immigration to the U.S. under these programs: family reunification, former U.S. employee, and former reeducation camp detainee. Former reeducation camp prisoners immigrated to the U.S. through the ODP’s category HO. (Reference 1)
Access Criteria for Humanitarian Resettlement or ODP (reference 2)
The Access Criteria for Humanitarian Resettlement or ODP are as follows:
HO category – Former Re-Education Center Detainees:
- a) Vietnamese applicants who spent three or more years in a re-education center as a result of their close association with U.S. agencies or organizations to implement United States Government programs and/or policies prior to April 30, 1975; OR
- b) Vietnamese applicants:
– who spent at least one year in a re-education center as a result of their close association with the U.S. Government prior to April 30, 1975 and
– who were also trained for any length of time in the United States or its territories under the auspices of the United States Government prior to April 30, 1975; OR
- c) Vietnamese applicants:
– who spent at least one year in a re-education center as a result of their close association with the United States Government prior to April 30, 1975 and
– who had been directly employed by the United States Government, a U.S. company or a U.S. organization for at least one year prior to April 30, 1975; OR
- d) Widow/widower applicants whose spouse was sent to a re-education center as a result of his/her close association with the United States Government prior to April 30, 1975 and who died while in a re-education center or died within one year after release.
U-11 category – Former U.S. Government Employee:
Direct-hire employees of the United States Government in Vietnam, with a cumulative period of time totaling five or more years verified United States Government employment during the period from January 1, 1963 through April 30, 1975.
V-11 category – Former Employees of Private U.S. Companies or Organizations:
Direct-hire employees of private U.S. companies and/or U.S. organizations, with a cumulative period of time totaling five or more years verified employment during the period from January 1, 1963 through April 30, 1975.
Eligible Immediate Family Members:
An approved applicant’s spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21 at the time of application may be included under Humanitarian Resettlement.
The ODP helped over 500,000 Vietnamese refugees immigrate to the U.S. before it ended in September 30, 1994. In November, 2005, the US and Vietnam signed an agreement reopening ODP and renewing the McCain Amendment (which allowed the children of former reeducation camp prisoners to immigrate with their parents). The renewal of ODP ended in February 2009, with the McCain Amendment expiring in September 2009.
In 1987 the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Homecoming Act, allowing Vietnamese children having American fathers to immigrate to the U.S. This Act allowed an estimated 23-25,000 Amerasians and 60-70,000 of their relatives to immigrate to the U.S.
Collapse of the 1979 International Consensus
Throughout much of the 1980s, although regional arrivals declined and resettlement commitments were sustained, the Vietnamese boat exodus continued and the human cost was immense. It is estimated that around 10 per cent of the boat people were lost at sea, fell victims to pirate attacks, drowned, or died of dehydration. The anti-piracy program and rescue-at-sea efforts had their successes, but every failure was a tragedy.
In mid of 1987, Vietnamese arrivals began to climb again. Encouraged by the relaxation of internal travel restrictions and the prospect of resettlement in Western countries, thousands of southern Vietnamese had discovered a new route that took them through Cambodia then, via a short boat ride, to Thailand’s east coast. At the turn of the year, Thai authorities began interdicting boats and sending them back to sea. Tens of thousands of others from the north took another new route via southern China to Hong Kong. In 1988, more than 18,000 boat people poured into Hong Kong. This was by far the highest number since the crisis of 1979. Most were from northern Viet Nam—a population that had proved to be of little interest to most resettlement countries. Consequently, on 15 June 1988, the Hong Kong administration announced that any Vietnamese arriving after that date would be placed in detention center to await a ‘screening’ interview to determine their status. In May 1989, the Malaysian authorities again began to redirect boat arrivals toward Indonesia, as they had done a decade earlier
By the late 1980s, international willingness to resettle all Vietnamese asylum seekers was waning and resettlement numbers were scarcely keeping pace with the rate of arrivals in first asylum countries. It had become apparent to virtually all concerned with the Indochinese refugee crisis that the regional and international consensus reached in 1979 had collapsed. A new formula was needed, one that preserved asylum but decoupled its link to guarantees of resettlement.
The 1989 Geneva conference and the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA).
On June 13 and 14 of 1989, 10 years after the first Indochinese refugee conference, another meeting was held in Geneva. On this occasion, the 70 governments present adopted a new regional approach, which became known as the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA). The CPA represented a major multilateral effort to resolve the Vietnamese refugee problem. It was one of the first examples of a situation where the country of origin became a key player, together with other countries and actors from both within and outside the region, in helping to resolve a major refugee crisis. The CPA had five main objectives: first, to reduce clandestine departures through official measures against those organizing boat departures and through mass information campaigns, and to promote increased opportunities for legal migration under the Orderly Departure Program; second, to provide temporary asylum to all asylum seekers until their status was established and a durable solution found; third, to determine the refugee status of all asylum seekers in accordance with international standards and criteria; fourth, to resettle in third countries those recognized as refugees, as well as all Vietnamese who were in camps prior to the regional cut-off dates; and fifth, to return those found not to be refugees and to reintegrate them in their home countries. The task of implementing the CPA fell to UNHCR, with financial support coming from the donor community. A Steering Committee was established, chaired by UNHCR and comprising representatives of all governments making commitments under the CPA, whether for asylum, resettlement or repatriation. Where the 1979 commitments on asylum were general, those made a decade later were more specific. They stated: ‘Temporary refuge will be given to all asylum seekers who will be treated identically regardless of their mode of arrival until the status determination process is completed.’ These commitments were honored throughout most of the region, though there were exceptions. Thailand, amongst others, halted its pushbacks, but Singapore no longer permitted rescue-at-sea cases or direct arrivals to disembark. In Malaysia, throughout much of 1989–90, local authorities had orders to redirect boat arrivals back into international waters. Through the combined effect of disincentives in the camps (including the termination of repatriation assistance for new arrivals after September 1991) and UNHCR media campaigns inside Viet Nam, the CPA finally brought an end to the flow of Vietnamese asylum seekers. In 1989, roughly 70,000 Vietnamese sought asylum in Southeast Asia. In 1992, only 41 Vietnamese did so.
Refugee Screening Cut-Off Date and Repatriation
The CPA also represented an early instance of the application of a cut-off date. Those who fled before this date were automatically accepted for resettlement abroad, while those who arrived afterwards had to be screened first to determine their status. For Hong Kong the cut-off date is 15 June 1988. For Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand the cut-off date is 14 March 1989. If the success of the 1979 conference depended on the commitments of the countries of resettlement, that of the CPA depended on the commitments of the countries of first asylum and the countries of origin. In December 1988, seven months before the Geneva conference, UNHCR and Viet Nam signed a Memorandum of Understanding, whereby Viet Nam would allow for the voluntary return of its citizens without penalizing them for having fled, it would expand and accelerate the ODP, and it would permit UNHCR to monitor returnees and facilitate reintegration.
At the time of the CPA conference in 1989, a total of 50,670 pre-cut-off date Vietnamese refugees were in Southeast Asian camps. Of these, nearly a quarter had already been rejected by at least one resettlement country and another quarter were low priority cases under increasingly restrictive resettlement criteria. By the end of 1991, virtually all of these people were resettled. Of the post-cut-off-date for the Vietnamese, a total of some 32,300 were recognized as refugees and resettled, as against 83,300 whose claims were rejected and who returned home. Overall, during the eight years of the CPA, more than 530,000 Vietnamese and Laotians were resettled in other countries. None of the countries which agreed to implement the refugee status determination procedures were parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention except the Philippines, and none had previous legislative or administrative experience in determining refugee status. Nevertheless, all of the five principal places of first asylum—Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand—adopted procedures giving asylum seekers access to UNHCR, a full refugee status determination interview, the services of an interpreter, and the possibility of review by a second authority. Additionally, in Hong Kong, applicants had access to the courts for judicial review. Overall, about 28 per cent of Vietnamese asylum seekers who applied for refugee status under CPA procedures were successful. Hong Kong, which interviewed the highest number of applicants (60,275), also had the lowest approval rate (18.8 per cent). UNHCR’s authority to recognize refugees under its mandate provided an important safety net for ensuring that no person with a valid claim was rejected and returned to Viet Nam.
In order to reach a consensus on repatriation to Vietnam, the governments that were party to the CPA had agreed in 1989 that “in the first instance, every effort will be made to encourage the voluntary return of those whose applications are rejected . . . If, after the passage of reasonable time, it becomes clear that voluntary repatriation is not making sufficient progress toward the desired objective, alternatives recognized as being acceptable under international practices would be examined”. Although no one would say so directly, most people acknowledged at the time that this meant involuntary return. Hong Kong had begun screening arrivals one year earlier than the rest of the region and, by March 1989, had already organized the first voluntary repatriation to Viet Nam in more than a decade. Over the following months, however, the government decided that insufficient numbers were returning voluntarily and resorted to more extreme measures. On December 12th 1989, under the darkness, more than 100 Hong Kong police escorted a group of 51 Vietnamese men, women and children to a waiting airplane and flew them to Hanoi. The ensuing international protests persuaded Hong Kong to postpone further involuntary repatriation. In a new development, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Vietnam signed an agreement in October 1991 to implement an ‘Orderly Return Program’. The ASEAN countries of asylum eventually signed their own Orderly Return Program agreements, under which UNHCR agreed to cover transportation costs and to provide some logistical support, while insisting that it would not participate in movements that involved force. In the end the distinction between voluntary and involuntary return became blurry with rising tensions in the Vietnamese camps and frequent outbreaks of violence in the Hong Kong camps. From 1992, the pace of repatriation quickened and the task fell to UNHCR to coordinate reintegration assistance and to monitor the Vietnamese who ultimately returned home under the CPA arrangements.
During the eight-year period of the CPA, more than 109,000 Vietnamese returned home. To assist them in their reintegration, UNHCR offered each returnee a cash grant of between US$240 and US$360, which was paid in instalments by the government’s Ministry of Labour, War Invalids, and Social Affairs. UNHCR also spent more than US$6 million on 300 micro-projects around the country, focusing on water, education, and community infrastructure. In the area of employment and job development, UNHCR looked to the European Community International Program which made more than 56,000 loans of between US$300 and US$20,000 to returnees. The loans greatly facilitated the development of small businesses and 88 per cent were repaid. Although 80 per cent of the returnees went primarily to eight coastal provinces, they returned to all of Viet Nam’s 53 provinces from north to south. To make UNHCR’s monitoring responsibilities even more challenging, an estimated 25 per cent of returnees moved at least once after returning from the camps, mostly to cities and towns to look for work.
In June 1996 UNHCR terminated assistance and closed camps for asylum seekers in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. The Hong Kong camp was closed in 1997.
The United States eventually resettled a total of over a million Vietnamese people.
Vietnamese Refugees in the United States
From 1975, the United States opened its doors to over a million Vietnamese people. Although the largest number now live in California, these people have made their way to every state and almost every major US city.
The Vietnamese arrived in several waves. More than 175,000 Vietnamese refugees fled to the United States during the first two years following the fall of Saigon in 1975. A large majority arrived within a few weeks and were sheltered in four makeshift refugee camps on US military bases. They are listed as follows:
- Camp Pendleton in California
- Fort Chaffee in Arkansas
- Eglin Air Force base in Florida
- Fort Indiantown Gap in Pennsylvania.
Private and religious organizations were given responsibility for resettling the Vietnamese in cities and towns across the United States. They arranged housing and English language classes, found schools for the children, and helped the adults to find jobs.
Americans responded positively to this first wave of Vietnamese. Many felt a sense of guilt over the US involvement in Vietnam and welcomed the opportunity to help the refugees. Churches and community groups across the country served as local sponsors helping the refugees assimilate into their new communities. This first group of refugees fared remarkably well in the United States. Most of them came from the urban middle class in the south of Vietnam with college education and secondary education.
Despite having arrived in the United States at a time of serious economic recession, by 1982 their rate of employment was higher than that of the general US population. Vietnamese communities sprang up in California, Texas and Washington, DC. Soon Vietnamese businesses were catering to the new communities. A second wave of Vietnamese refugees began arriving in the United States in 1978. These were the ‘boat people’, who fled increasing political repression in Viet Nam, especially against ethnic Chinese Vietnamese. Although exact figures are difficult to assess, the total number of Vietnamese boat people who entered between 1978 and 1997 is estimated to be in excess of 400,000.
The boat people were less well equipped for life in the United States. In general, they were less well educated and had a more rural background than the refugees who arrived in 1975; far fewer spoke English. Many had experienced persecution in Vietnam, trauma on the high seas and harsh conditions in refugee camps in Southeast Asian countries that reluctantly accepted their temporary presence.
By the time this group of Vietnamese arrived, many Americans were growing weary of refugees. Anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by a declining economy led to attacks on Vietnamese in several communities. US government support for the refugee program was also waning. In 1982, the US government reduced the period of time during which it assisted newly arrived refugees and, despite the economy being in an even worse state than in 1975, instituted a number of measures aimed at moving refugees into the workforce as soon as possible. Many of the boat people ended up in poorly paid jobs, often without having had an opportunity to learn English or acclimatize to their new environment. Nevertheless, according to a 1985 US-government commissioned study on self-sufficiency among Southeast Asian refugees, within three years of their arrival, their economic status was comparable to that of other US minority groups.
The ODP, established in 1979, made it possible for Vietnamese to migrate directly from Viet Nam to the United States. Initially intended to benefit relatives of Vietnamese refugees already in the United States and South Vietnamese who had ties to the US government. The US government later extended the Orderly Departure Program to Amerasians (Vietnamese children of US servicemen), former political prisoners and re-education camp detainees. Between 1979 and 1999, more than 500,000 Vietnamese entered the United States under this program.
Former political prisoners and re-education camp detainees who were older generations arrived in the States traumatized by their past experiences in Vietnam found it extremely hard to make a new start. It was more difficult for them to find work and the type of jobs that they could find were often not commensurate with their previous work experience social status.
Overall, millions-plus of Vietnamese, particularly the second generation of Vietnamese Americans, have resettled in the United States and adapted well. Nowadays they have formed an integral part of the US society.
Final Thoughts
What do people say or think about Vietnamese refugees’ experience?
What should future generations learn from the experiences of the ‘boat people’?
What do people in the world view about the two massive exodus that Vietnamese experienced due to communism?
The second exodus has been such a painful past to millions of Vietnamese people and served as a reminder that such history should not be repeated! Let’s not forget
the great sacrifices that earlier Vietnamese refugees’ generation made to provide younger generations with freedom. The goal of the Vietnamese Heritage Museum is to help keep the Vietnamese refugee history alive and to preserve Vietnamese Boat People Heritage.
References:
- Reference 1: The VN center and Sam Johnson archive Section Vietnamese American.
- Reference 2: US Department of State archive – Joint US- VN announcement of humanitarian settlement program. Office of the Spokesman Nov 15, 2005.
