U.S. Tells ‘Boat People’ to Return Home

The U.S. government has begun telling thousands of Vietnamese in crowded refugee camps throughout Southeast Asia to go home, marking a shift in U.S. policy toward “boat people” and their desperate exodus from Vietnam.

Since October, the State Department’s Refugee Bureau has employed retired Army Col. Andre Sauvegeot, an eight-year veteran of the Vietnam War who speaks Vietnamese, to implement the policy change, officials said.

The U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong confirmed that Sauvegeot’s mission is to encourage boat people to return home voluntarily.

Refugee-rights activists criticized the policy as another in a string of “confusing signals” Washington has sent to the estimated 100,000 boat people crowding squalid camps in Asia.

Arthur Helton, director of the Refugee Project for the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said he is concerned that legitimate refugees--ones who fled for political rather than economic reasons--might be persuaded to return to Vietnam and end up facing persecution.

Helton said the U.S. policy encourages people to return to a country Washington has yet to recognize. It also runs counter to Washington’s opposition to the forcible repatriation of the boat people.

Henry Le, 39, chairman of the Orange County Vietnamese-American Republican Heritage Council, had harsh words for the new policy.

“That is absurd, because when the people (in refugee camps) return home like that, it would give them a death sentence. They had to run away from home for their freedom,” Le said.

Instead of forcing refugees to return home, Le said the United States should try to find another solution. “I’d rather see the U.S. find a temporary solution like putting them on an island in the Pacific,” he said.

Vietnamese volunteers in this country could care for the camp until the “dictatorship” is gone, he said, then “all the refugees would return home.”

The-Thuy Nguyen, adviser to the Union of Vietnamese Students Assns. of Southern California, also suggested that there are other solutions to the refugee problem.

“The people don’t have to come to the United States,” Nguyen said. “The United States can recommend or introduce those people to other countries willing to help.”

Times staff writer Ajowa Ifateyo contributed to this report.