Hope for Refugees Drying Up Among Vietnamese Americans

These days, Mai Ngoc Vuong and thousands of other Vietnamese Americans are besieged by a sense of helplessness.

Her younger brother, Vuong Kim Lan, is among 31,000 Vietnamese “boat people” who since 1988 have been living in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, seeking political asylum and resettlement in other countries.

Their hope--boundless years ago when they set out to sea on flimsy boats to escape the Communist regime of Vietnam--is about to run dry.

By June 30, the camps are to be closed under an international agreement in which the United Nations, which has been overseeing the camps in four countries and Hong Kong, will shut down operations. Because asylum-seekers such as Lan have been judged economic migrants and not political refugees, they will be forced back to Vietnam by the countries--Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, as well as Hong Kong--that are eager to clear their refugee centers to meet the deadline.

And there’s not much Vuong and others like her can do about it.

For the boat people to be successfully sponsored in the U.S., they must return to Vietnam and apply, a process itself that could take up to 15 years. Many Vietnamese fear the applications will get bogged down in Vietnam’s notorious bureaucracy.

“My brother is scared and he writes me, wanting to know what the situation here is like, if anyone cares, if anyone can help him, if there is anything we could do to keep him from being forced back,” said Vuong, 55, of Garden Grove. She sighed and gave the answer she hasn’t the heart to tell her brother: “It’s pretty hopeless. Realistically, I don’t know if anyone can do anything. Maybe pray. That’s about it.”

That and filing futile written appeals to locally elected officials and some refugee advocacy groups whose hands also are tied.

“The decks are totally stacked against the claims of the people,” said Al Santoli, assistant to Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove). The congressman’s office has led the effort to have two delegations from the General Accounting Office go to Geneva and Malaysia to argue on behalf of 500 refugees who Dornan’s office feels should have been granted asylum.

The teams are now abroad and addressing the reported physical abuses in the camps, Santoli said. In Hong Kong, tear gas and baton clubs have been used by security guards to maintain order during riots led by migrants protesting forced repatriation. And in Malaysia, there have been allegations of sexual assaults and that the asylum seekers are forced to “voluntarily” register to return to Vietnam or face beatings.

Santoli acknowledged that the chances of those allegations being investigated by the U.N. are slim, but Dornan’s office still wants to bring attention to them. A better bet--although not much better, he said--is that U.N. officials might be persuaded to take another look at the cases of some of the migrants.

“We may have a fighting chance--and I say, a fighting chance--but it’s better than nothing,” Santoli said.

Westminster resident Diep Ngoc Nguyen has an older sister, three nieces and a nephew who since 1989 have been living in a camp in Thailand. They depend on handouts from the U.N. and the $100 monthly checks Nguyen mails them. A year ago, to discourage the migrants from harboring any hope of immigrating to the West, the Thailand government discontinued mail service into the camp, said Nguyen, who herself lived for two years in a refugee camp before immigrating to Westminster in 1986.

One of her nieces, in fits of depression, has attempted suicide several times, Nguyen said. “She can’t go forward because no [country] wants her and she doesn’t want to go back,” Nguyen said. “All of them, they’re just stuck there and no one cares anymore.”

Years ago, when they first braved death on the high seas, the boat people received sympathy from the international community, which loosened its purse strings and welcomed them into different countries. Today, said Phuong Fabre, executive director of the Westminster-based Legal Assistance for Vietnamese Asylum Seekers, their situation is “almost a dead issue.”

“I think everybody is a little tired of the situation,” Fabre said. “What [the public doesn’t] realize is that it’s not over for these people because they have to once again go through a major turning point in their lives.”