Preventive Action for Refugee Producing Situations

86 Chapter 3
Principal pull factors are:
1. Resettlement in the West
2. No right of return to Vietnam
3. No screening and no voluntary repatriation
4. Hope for rescue at sea by international vessels
5. United Nations aid in camps in neighboring countries
6. Overseas Vietnamese lobby for aid and resettlement
a) Push factors
Push factors are problems that may eventually compel people to leave the
country. 178 In the recent history of Vietnam, we have identified the following
as the most important push factors.
1. Family reunification
In Asian cultures, where extended families are common, the integrity of the
family unit is crucial. For UNHCR, the reunification of refugees with their
families is a generally accepted principle; family members, especially
spouses and dependents, are entitled to be reunited with their relatives
living as refugees outside the country of origin. During the years before the
ODP was set up, UNHCR operated a limited family reunion program. 17 9
The more Vietnamese who escaped, however, the greater the number of
people staying behind in Vietnam who also wanted to leave.
Although on 26 February 1988 the Chairman of the Council of Ministers
issued a decision authorizing Vietnamese citizens to leave the
_______________________
178 Clark, "Early Warning of Refugee Flows," (Draft) Refugee Policy Group,
Washington, June 1988, p. 9.
179 The Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner's Programme
adopted specific Conclusions on this subject. The first is No. 9 (XXVIII) of
1977: "The Executive Committee
(a) Reiterated the fundamental importance of the principle of family reunion;
(b) Reaffirmed the co-ordinating role of UNHCR with a view to promoting
the reunion of separated refugee families through appropriate interventions
with Governments and with intergovernmental organizations;
(c) Noted with satisfaction that some measures of progress has been achieved
in regard tothe reunion of separated families through the efforts currently
undertaken by UNHCR." A second Conclusion (No. 24 (XXXII)) of 1981
elaborates the previous one. Among others, Para. 4 this Conclusion
recognizes the right of everyone to leave any country, including his own to
join the refugee abroad.
Analytical Discussion 87
country for a specified period of time to settle personal affairs, this is not likely
to reduce the stream of people wishing the to join their family members abroad.
Besides, few if any countries are likely to provide visitor visas, suspecting the
applicants (probably correctly) of using this avenue as a way to enter their
country permanently. 180
2. Racial discrimination
Of a population of three million living in the South Vietnamese capital after
1975, there were more than one million ethnic Chinese living in the Cholon
section of the capital. Many of the ethnic Chinese had become Vietnamese
citizens as a means of avoiding legalized discrimination against their commercial
activities. Their communities were like a state within a state, never really a part
of the Vietnamese community. The estimated ethnic Chinese population of North
Vietnam was 300,000, of whom some 250,000 crossed into China during 1978
and 1979.
The sudden change from the artificial wartime prosperity in Saigon, with a
growing urban population depending on American financial backing to survive,
was most sharply felt by the large ethnic Chinese community. Its members had
dominated commerce of all kinds throughout the colonial and postcolonial
periods. 181 In the spring of 1978 governmental troops confiscated gold, jewelry,
rice, and vegetables -much of the property of the Chinese Vietnamese in Cholon
- and sent some 700,000 of them to New Economic Zones. This prompted them
to leave in large groups, a practice the government unofficially tolerated and
even encouraged, as became clear in negotiations for the definition of persons to
182
qualify for the Orderly Departure Program. Whereas UNHCR and
resettlement countries wanted the ODP for family reunion cases, the Vietnamese
authorities insisted on broadening the categories to
180 "Government Issues Decision on Foreign Travel," BK291544 Hanoi Domestic
Service in Vietnamese, FBIS- EAS- 88-040,1 March 1988.
181 See Osborne, pp. 39-40.
182 Depending on the place of departure (Vungtau or the Mekong Delta), the price for
flight to an uncertain point of arrival has been some US $2,000 when the "big boat
trade" in ethnic Chinese refugees started in 1978. Seven years later, the cost to
leave by boat was still between 540,000 and 630,000 Dong in gold (equivalent to
US $1,500-2,000). See Jürgen Dauth, "Aus der täglichen Not in eine Ungewisse
Zukunft, In Südostasien droht eine neue Fluchtwelle der Vietnamesen über das
Sudchinesische Meer", quoted in Fluchtmotive: Vietnam, Äthiopien, Sri Lanka,
ZDWF Schriftenreihe No. 23, (Bonn: Zentrale Dokumentationsstelle für Flüchtlinge
der Freien Wohlfahrt, 1987), pp. 30-38.