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“SOUTHEAST ASIA BOAT PEOPLE: RETURN IS THE ONLY OPTION” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E1162-E1163 on June 6, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
SOUTHEAST ASIA BOAT PEOPLE: RETURN IS THE ONLY OPTION
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HON. DOUG BEREUTER
of nebraska
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, June 6, 1995
Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, recently this body voted in section 2104 of H.R. 1561 to withdraw its support from the Comprehensive Plan of Action, the international agreement on the Indochinese boat people in Southeast Asian refugee camps. This Member's effort, along with Mr. Obey of Wisconsin and Mr. Lamar Smith of Texas, to strike this dangerous and irresponsible provision was unsuccessful.
While this Member fully understands and shares the desire to provide fair and humane treatment to those in the refugee camps, the action of this body could well have the opposite effect. By giving these asylum seekers false hope of resettlement in the United States, this legislation presents the following dangers. It will likely encourage another wave of boat departures from Vietnam, putting people at risk on the high seas and swelling the refugee camp population at a time when the first asylum countries are attempting to close the camps.
The legislation also increases the chance for violence in the refugee camps by causing discontent among the camp residents when their hopes of resettlement in the West are not realized. Finally, the bill has caused the collapse of voluntary repatriation, through which 72,000 Indochinese have already returned home without evidence of persecution, according to U.N. and American nongovernment monitors in Vietnam. Already there have been riots and violence in the camps of Hong Kong and several hundred camp residents have changed their minds and are refusing to return to Vietnam.
For these reasons, this Member believes that, for the 40,000 camp residents whom the United Nations has determined to be economic migrants rather than political refugees, voluntary return to their countries of origin is not only the sole option available, it is also the most humane option.
Mr. Speaker, this Member would ask to insert into the Record an article from the May 24, 1995 edition of the New York Times, entitled,
``U.N. Links G.O.P. to Boat People's Riots,'' and an excellent letter analyzing the problems in section 2104 from the Refugee Policy Group, a nongovernment organization with much experience dealing with Indochinese refugees.
U.N. Links G.O.P. to Boat People's Riots
(By Philip Shenon)
Bangkok, Thailand, May 23.--United Nations officials asserted today that a Republican-sponsored proposal to offer asylum to thousands of Vietnamese boat people in the United States set off riots last weekend that left more than 200 wounded in Hong Kong.
They also warned that the bill could lead to a new exodus from Vietnam.
Refugee officials say the riots last Saturday began when 1,500 Vietnamese, many of them carrying handmade metal spears, refused to be transferred from one detention camp in Hong Kong to another in preparation for their deportation to Vietnam. It was the most violent clash in years between the boat people and the Hong Kong police.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which oversees the detention camps in Hong Kong, said the Vietnamese were emboldened to riot by the recent move by Republicans in the House of Representatives to offer asylum to as many as half of the 40,000 Vietnamese still held in detention camps in Asia.
``Absolutely,'' said Jahanshah Assadi, head of mission for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, when asked if there was a connection between the legislation and the riots. During the riots, he said, ``you saw U.S. flags all over the place, you saw portraits of President Clinton all over the place.''
At least 180 Hong Kong firemen, police and corrections officers were hurt in the clashes on Saturday in the Whitehead detention center, the largest of the Hong Kong camps used to detain the Vietnamese. Dozens of Vietnamese were also hurt in battles in which the camp was blanketed by thick clouds of tear gas.
Representative Chris H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican who is a key sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement today in Washington that there was no evidence of a connection between the legislation and the violence in Hong Kong. It is ``grossly unfair to blame resistance to forced repatriation on the very people who are trying to come up with a peaceful and gentle solution to the problem of these refugees,'' he declared.
Mr. Smith has said that many of the Vietnamese residents of the camps, including Buddhist monks and former soldiers of the American-backed South Vietnamese Government, are legitimate political refugees who could be persecuted by Vietnam's Communist Government if sent home.
While the Republican-drafted legislation is opposed by the Clinton Administration and faces an uncertain fate in Congress, word of the Republican plan is already circulating in the camps in Hong Kong, where nearly 21,000 Vietnamese are now detained. Mr. Assadi said in a telephone interview that the Vietnamese who joined in the riots ``have the false hope of going to the United States.''
Even if the bill is defeated in Congress or vetoed by President Clinton, he said, ``the damage has been done,'' since many Vietnamese now believe that they can resist deportation because ``they have strong support from influential members of Congress.''
Mr. Assadi said the American asylum proposal could also lead to a new exodus of Vietnamese, taking to rickety boats and pushing off into the dangerous waters of the South China Sea in the hope of becoming one of the lucky 20,000 who might be offered resettlement in the United States.
``That risk is definitely there now,'' he said. The $30 million asylum plan is part of a foreign affairs appropriations bill now before the full House of Representatives. The bill, opposed by the Clinton Administration, has already been approved by the House International Relations Committee.
While some of the Vietnamese rioters waved photographs of President Clinton last weekend, the Clinton Administration is in fact a strong advocate of a United Nations-backed plan to send virtually all of them home to Vietnam.
While the United States granted asylum to most of the more than one million Vietnamese who fled their homeland after the Vietnam War, sympathy for the boat people has mostly run out. The State Department says that virtually all of the Vietnamese who remain in Asian detention camps are economic migrants who have no legitimate fear of persecution in Vietnam and are not entitled to asylum.
The deportation program, known as the Comprehensive Plan of Action, was supposed to empty most of the detention camps around Asia--there are also large camps in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand--by the end of the year.
The Hong Kong Government is clearly outraged that the moves in Congress may have contributed to the violence in the camps.
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Rebuke by White House
Washington, May 23.--Administration officials said today that they had predicted that the proposed Republican measure would encourage thousands of boat people who were not qualified for refugee status to refuse to be returned to Vietnam.
``We are opposed to the proposed legislation which, at the 11th hour, seeks to abrogate an international undertaking,'' said one State Department official. ``The proposed legislation would reopen large-scale screening of those already found to be ineligible for refugee status.''
Administration officials predicted the bill would encourage further riots like the one that occurred on Saturday in Hong Kong.
``The proposed legislation will end voluntary return to Vietnam and create new levels of false hope and result in further disturbances,'' a State Department official said.
Administration officials assert that the $30 million the bill sets aside to handle the Vietnamese migrants would mean less money would be available to handle those found to be legitimate refugees from Vietnam, Cuba, Bosnia and Russia.
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Refugee Policy Group,
May 26, 1995.Hon. Doug Bereuter,Chair, Asia Subcommittee, International Relations Committee,
Washington, DC.
Dear Congressman Bereuter: Your office contacted me, asking for my views on Section 2104(4) of HR 1561 entitled,
``Resettlement of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians.'' This provision essentially turns the clock back undermining the agreements that were reached with great effort and have been reflected in the comprehensive plan of action.
I can only speculate on the basis for this proposal which would be tantamount to a significant and far reaching policy reversal. Politically it's a step back toward an ideological divide that has possible implications for how movements of people from places such as Cuba and China would be addressed.
[[Page E1163]]
On the humanitarian front this policy reversal would represent a death knell to future efforts on the part of the U.S. to get the U.N. and other countries to cooperate with us in addressing a migration flow where there is belief that some, but not all, the members of that population may be refugees.
This policy reversal is based on a misapprehension that the screening procedures in the region have been basically flawed. The fact is that massive international effort and resources have gone into screening the applicants in this region. Indeed, more effort has been made in southeast Asia to determine whether someone meets the refugee definition than in any other part of the world. The international standard of who is a refugee is incorporated in this review process. This international standard was incorporated in the Refugee Act of 1980 into U.S. law and in turn into the Worldwide Processing Guidelines of the INS.
The implementation of this standard is subjective. In order to protect against errors reviews of problematic cases are possible under current arrangements. If there is reasonable doubt regarding some of the recent decisions a more effective way to address these concerns would be to encourage a re-review of the few cases where there is an issue. It is an overreaction to scuttle the CPA when problems can be worked out within its framework and procedures.
Significant effort has been made to promote voluntary repatriation of those determined not be refugees and to provide monitoring of their situation back in Vietnam once they return. So far as I know, UNHCR has not reported any instances of situations where Vietnamese who have returned have been persecuted or been maltreated. The effects of this provision, of course, would be to cut funds which can support the return, monitoring, and assistance to the Vietnamese who go back either voluntarily or involuntarily.
The intention may be to reserve funds for the resettlement of a larger number of Vietnamese or Laotians. So long, however, as the refugee definition is the standard that is used to adjudicate claims, the reality is going to be that very few of the people in the camps will meet the standard.
While I would be against it, we can, of course, decide, bilaterally, to admit Vietnamese and Laotians under the terms of the Lautenberg Amendment. It is, however, unreasonable to expect that the countries in the region who are adjudicating these claims with UNHCR oversight would be willing to apply this standard to their own review of these cases.
Given strong sentiments in this country to restrict the numbers of new immigrants, my guess is that there would be strong opposition to bringing substantial numbers of Vietnamese and Laotians to the U.S., either as refugees or special humanitarian entrants. It is also unlikely that normal immigration numbers would be allocated to this group as there has been an effort to get Vietnamese to apply for immigration to the U.S. from within Vietnam. If these assumptions are true then the result of this expression of sympathy for the Vietnamese in the camps that have been screened out can be to provide them with a false hope. At best, it could lead to a situation where people who were becoming reconciled to returning to their country would re-commit themselves to remaining in the camps. Worse outcomes could be a renewed flow of boat people and even worse riots or other disruptions and violence in the camps.
As a former official with the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the peak of the Indochinese refugee resettlement program, I cannot personally be accused of lack of sympathy or concern for the plight of the Indochinese. I feel the decisions made around the Comprehensive Plan of Action were the right decisions, both for the countries concerned and the migrants involved. To reverse course now will have negative effects on efforts to address the plight of refugees everywhere.
Thank you for seeking my comments on this matter.
Sincerely,
Dennis Gallagher,
Executive Director.
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