Vietnam, Refugees and Quayle : Vice President’s effort in Orange County to explain policy came up short

The Vietnamese enclaves of Orange County have provided fertile ground for Republican recruiting, but as Vice President Dan Quayle found out in a visit last week, new voters also bring expectations. The recent move toward normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam has produced fresh anxiety in Little Saigon in Westminster. It’s a community all too familiar with the human suffering of economic dislocation and political repression.

The news that the U.S. government has been urging refugees in Hong Kong to return to Vietnam was understandably greeted with alarm in the Vietnamese-American community, which has read this move as a signal that the United States has retreated from seeking other ways of handling the refugee problem. There were protesters and some questions for the vice president about Administration policy. But while Quayle outlined some conditions for normalization, he fell short of a clear explanation of the nuances of this tricky refugee question, and why, ultimately, there are no good solutions. Many listeners were left unsatisfied.

The vice president did affirm the Administration’s opposition to forced repatriation, but didn’t seem to know about the State Department’s recent efforts at encouraging people to go home. So here was an opportunity lost to say something important about the conflict between justifiable foreign-policy considerations and the frustration of trying to meet the critical human needs arising from the problems of the refugees.

The vice president sounded an affirmation of human rights as a general condition for better relations with Vietnam, which was good. But he ought to have acknowledged the limits on what the U.S. government can do about the refugees, and linked American support to some sort of international monitoring effort to help protect returnees from persecution.

In fact, it is the Hong Kong government, not the United States, that has the jurisdiction over the fate of those refugees in Hong Kong. And last month, the top U.N. refugee official there was moved by camp violence to urge a hastening of repatriation on humanitarian grounds.

The problem is similar to the dilemma facing the United States in dealing with the Haitian boat people. Their plight tugs at the heart of the civilized world, but, sadly, there is no quick or easy solution in sight.