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refugees-most in the last three years. Through this effort, we have effectively taken all those Khmer who have family or other strong ties to the United States.
The remaining population in Khao I Dang is all in what is called the P-6 category, the last, catch-all category of the U.S. priority system. They are mostly Khmer rice farmers, as are the majority of the 260,000 Khmer camped along the border. They have no relatives in the United States or ties to our past involvement in Cambodia.
These Khmer are now being processed for admission to the United States, even though they are in Khao I Dang only by chance. No one in 1980, when the Khao I Dang holding center was established, would have imagined, much less proposed, that this entire camp population would be considered for third country resettlement. At that time, there was discussion of screening out those cases who had family or other ties to the United States and other countries, and that has already been done. But at the time, no one suggested the entire camp should be processed for resettlement.
Yet, now, the U.S. Refugee Office in Bangkok has concluded the preliminary processing for resettlement in the United States of the entire 50,000 Khmer remaining in Khao I Dang before the latest refugee influx caused by the recent Vietnamese military offensive along the Thai-Cambodian border. Why? Because Thailand wanted to close the camp and move the remaining population to the border.
The United States and the UNHCR have fallen into
effort to assure that this trend continues.
A total of 65,829 Vietnamese have moved to over 15 countries through ODP since 1979-with 20,472, or about a third of the total, coming to the United States as of December 1984. Nonetheless, a backlog of nearly half a million applications remains piled up at the ODP office in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. These applications are principally from family members in the United States, but there are many others with strong ties to our country. Based on numbers, the ODP is succeeding, although it has yet to turn off the boat flow completely. However, we have reached a watershed in the program where one critical issue must be resolved or the program will fail: the composition of those coming out through the program. The issue is whether those coming out through ODP reflect the priorities of the receiving countries, and not just the interests of Vietnam.
Although accurate statistics are not available, it appears that far fewer than 40 percent of those who have come to the United States through ODP appeared on the lists submitted by us to the Vietnamese. Until now, Vietnam has viewed the program as a means to rid itself of certain unwanted segments of its population-ethnic Chinese and Amerasian children.
the trap of calling this move "involuntary repatri- ation." When the Thais indicated they were going to close the camp and move the refugees, except for those who could be resettled abroad, the United States began processing the residue from Khao I Dang. Of the 50,000, all but 8,000 were in the P-6 category.
It is difficult to accept that the most durable, much less humane, solution is to transport these Khmer rice farmers to California instead of four miles to the border. It is even more difficult to see the wisdom of committing increasingly scarce refugee settlement numbers, en masse, to resettle those in the lowest priority category in our program.
The United States and the UNHCR have been trapped by terminology. If the closing and movement of Khao I Dang had been called a “relocation" of the camp instead of a threatened "repatriation," we would not now be processing this population. After all, moving this camp is not much different from the previous closings and shifts of other camps by the Thais. Bringing these people to the United States can only mortgage future resettlement numbers for future refugees in higher priorities who may have stronger claims to America's attention.
The United States still has a commitment to help resettle those Khmer-including those in the border camps-with family ties in the United States, and we should save scarce resettlement numbers for them when it becomes possible, hopefully this year, to begin processing them.
Fortunately, there is some indication that this trend is reversing and with some diplomatic negotiations and a pledge to significantly increase the numbers we are prepared to accept under the program, the Vietnamese may be willing to make ODP conform more to the interests of family reunification in the receiving countries. It should be made clear to the Vietnamese that if they don't-if family reunion and other priority cases on the U.S. list do not come out in greater numbers this year— the United States will have no alternative but to curtail its participation in the program. Of course, there will always be some who come out at Vietnam's insistence, but the ratio must change and reflect more the priorities of the receiving countries-such as political prisoners, Amer- asian children and family reunification cases.
In order to make the ODP program an even more attractive alternative to fleeing Vietnam by boat, the United States should join with others in significantly expanding the program. At a minimum, we should be prepared to signal our intentions to Vietnam by increas- ing the resettlement numbers we are prepared to take through ODP.
If in turn, Vietnam begins processing those cases that are highest on the U.S. list, the number leaving will be
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