Renewed U.S.-Hanoi Cooperation on Refugees Hailed as ‘Dramatic’

Renewed cooperation between the United States and Vietnam on refugee resettlement represents a “dramatic development” in efforts to combat problems of refugees in Southeast Asia, a State Department official says.

Jonathan Moore, director of the Bureau for Refugee Programs, said in an interview Monday that Vietnam’s recent resumption of the Orderly Departure Program means that fewer Vietnamese are risking their lives by trying to flee the country in boats.

The program, a 1979 agreement between Vietnam and the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has allowed 125,000 people to leave Vietnam legally, with 58,000 of them being resettled in the United States.

When the Vietnamese suspended the program for U.S. cases in 1986, there was a sharp increase in the number of people trying to escape by boat. Last September, the Vietnamese agreed to resume the program, and U.S. officials began processing the refugees last month.

Moore, who recently visited refugee camps in Thailand, Somalia and Pakistan, said he found “efforts to improve security” in the squalid, dangerous camps, adding that these developments “can’t help but indicate promise for the future.”

Moore acknowledged that desperate food shortages resulting from drought and strife in the Horn of Africa constitute a crisis. Somalia alone claims that more than 800,000 people are in its camps. Pakistan is staggering under the burden of 3 million Afghans who have fled their war-torn homeland.

Nevertheless, he said: “I was encouraged on this trip. I feel some progress has been made, generally, in all the places.”

Since 1975, more than 800,000 Indochinese refugees have resettled in the United States, forming a number of groups that focus on immigration and refugee issues.

Moore acknowledged the growing influence of the Indochinese, saying: “When you get sizable numbers of people who have resettled here and who have become American citizens, they become a strong political force.”