One critical issue must be resolved or the Orderly Departure Program will fail. The composition of those coming out must reflect the priorities of the receiving countries, and not just the interests of Vietnam.
even greater since many of these are the beneficiaries of mmigrant visa petitions and are not counted against the refugee ceiling.
Resettling Political Prisoners
In 1982, Vietnamese officials first publicly offered to release many of those imprisoned in "reeducation camps" since 1975, if the United states was willing to accept them. In May 1984, the offer was again renewed, this time by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong in an interview with Newsweek magazine.
Clearly, if there is a group in Vietnam which the United States has the highest moral obligation to assist, it is those who still remain political prisoners a decade after the war ended. These are the very people the original Indochinese refugee program was created to receive.
Yet, for over two years, the United States failed to respond to the Vietnamese offers at the highest levels of our government. Only after considerable congressional and public pressure did Secretary of State George Shultz, during last September's congressional consulta- tions on this year's refugee admissions program, formally offer to accept these political prisoners if Vietnam would release them. The United States proposed that they be expeditiously processed and included in the ODP pro- gram numbers.
Then, when the Vietnamese offer was accepted, Hanoi suddenly seemed to have second thoughts. What had appeared to be an open offer was encumbered with other foreign policy issues. A stalemate developed in negoti- ations on arranging for the exodus of these political prisoners.
The United States is insisting that the prisoners be processed over time in an orderly fashion; the Vietnamese want them out en masse. Washington wants to screen them before accepting them; Hanoi wants some guar- antees that, once released, these prisoners will be pre- vented from engaging in activities harmful to Vietnam- a guarantee the United States is unwilling and unable to give.
Whatever second thoughts Hanoi now has, the United States should continue to press the Vietnamese to release the "reeducation camp”inmates, and to do so by being as flexible as possible in agreeing to the terms of their departure. We certainly should raise no bureaucratic obstacles to their movement-even if it means no prior screening on an individual basis.
If necessary, we should be willing to fly them out, under UNHCR auspices, to the processing center in Bataan, the Philippines, and sort out their status and final destinations there. With the cooperation of other
resettlement countries, it should not be difficult to process and find resettlement opportunities for the some 10,000 persons involved-most of whom already have family ties in these countries. Any members of their families remaining in Vietnam can be processed later under the terms of the ODP program.
Refugee Numbers
This summer, Congress and the administration will again consult on how many Indochinese refugees should be admitted to meet several different U.S. objectives: our foreign policy interests in the region, our humanitarian concerns, and the needs of the refugees. Last year, President Reagan proposed a worldwide admission ceiling of 72,000, with the bulk-50,000-earmarked for Indochinese refugees. This year, the ceiling is 70,000, with 50,000 for Indochina.
In setting the 1986 figures, the United States must once again seek a number that reflects the continuing reset- tlement needs in Southeast Asia. The figures must also reassure the Southeast Asian countries of the continuing U.S. commitment to assist them with the problem and to protect the principle of first asylum, so they will not be tempted to close their doors to bona fide refugees. And the numbers should reflect our desire to assist those refugees who are of special humanitarian concern to the United States.
Weighing all these factors, the United States should not radically reduce its admissions level for Indochinese in the coming fiscal year.
However, we must continue to see this as a transition period, not only for dealing with the backlog which remains in the countries of first asylum, but also to find new alternatives to the continuing outflow of refugees and migrants from Indochina. The United States should also tighten the allocation of refugee resettlement num- bers to more correctly reflect our refugee admissions priorities.
For example, we should stipulate that no more than 25 percent of the available resettlement numbers should be used to resettle refugees in the last, catch-all P-6 category of the U.S. priority system. We should not eliminate this category, but it should not form the bulk of our admissions program, especially when it is not urgently warranted on humanitarian grounds, as is the case today among Khmer in Thailand (see "The Plight of Khmer Refugees, page 4).
The United States should also join with others in considering appropriate action to deal with the so-called "residue" population, which is emerging in several countries in Southeast Asia. These are persons who have
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