U.S. Official Hears Little Saigon’s Concerns on Refugee Matters

Questions about welfare cutbacks for refugees and repatriation of boat people were aimed Tuesday at Warren Zimmermann, director of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Refugee Affairs, by residents of Orange County’s Little Saigon.

Appointed to the job about eight months ago, Zimmermann held a community meeting as part of a fact-finding mission to gather the views of the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside Vietnam.

“We are at the beginning of a new administration. I’m not here to describe any major new policies,” Zimmermann said to a crowd of about 40 gathered at the Vietnamese Community Center.

The former ambassador to Yugoslavia, Zimmermann gave an update on thousands of boat people living in camps in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Hong Kong. Several Southland residents and Vietnamese community activists expressed concern about what they feel is a corrupt and unfair screening process of refugees in the camps.

If deemed by the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees to be political refugees, the boat people can be resettled in the United States or another country. However, if “screened out” or judged to be economic refugees, they can be voluntarily repatriated to Vietnam.

Closer to home, several Southland residents have voiced concern about the cutbacks in monetary aid to newly arrived refugees, from eight months’ to four months’ paid assistance.

“It will be very, very difficult . . . for those people to be equipped to find a job easily,” said Mai Cong, president of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County Inc.