increasing number of persons are motivated primarily by economic
and social factors. For example, late last year the Hong Kong
government estimated that only 10 percent of newly arrived
Vietnamese in the colony, mostly from northern Vietnam, were
likely to receive refugee status.
Given these widespread doubts concerning the factors which
compel the continued exodus of asylum seekers from the three
countries of Indochina, it is not surprising that prima facie
presumption of refugee status for all persons leaving those
countries is no longer seen as tenable by many concerned parties.
These doubts have affected the consensus developed in 1979 in two
ways. Countries of first asylum argue that they need not provide
temporary asylum to those found ineligible for refugee status;
resettlement countries argue that they have no responsibility to
admit anyone who is not a bonafide refugee.
A particular point of contention has been the exercise of
refugee status determination procedures by Western resettlement
countries, which have at the same time pressed affected countries
in the region to maintain an "open door policy" of providing
indefinite temporary asylum to all persons arriving from
Indochina. The United States, for example, has made individual
determinations of refugee status since 1981. Under U.S. refugee
law, entry is denied to all applicants who cannot establish a
well-founded fear of persecution as their motivation for leaving,
or their unwillingness to return to, their home countries.
This external "refugee screening" practice, accompanied by
5