From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Subject: [NEWS] The boat people of Vietnam see no hope aboard
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date: 17 Nov 92 05:27:37 GMT

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Home Is a Bit Less Humble, So Fewer Leave
From New York Times (11/16/92)
By Philip Shenon
Special to The New York Times

Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 15 - Vietnamese officials and foreign diplomats
stationed in Hanoi agree that the exodus of illegal emigrants is slowing
because of changes in Vietnamese economy, a growing awareness that there is
no opportunity for them to resettle in other countries and the end of
financial incentives to leave from the United Nations.
    Few here doubt that the Vietnamese who braved the seas in unsafe boats in
the mid-1970's were fleeing mostly from a fear of political persecution in a
newly reunified nation.
    But in recent years, Vietnamese officials and diplomats say, the chief
motivation was financial - a long-stagnant economy that left millions
unemployed and underfed.
    That is changing.  Although Vietnam is still controlled by a rigidly
authoritarian Government, since 1986 its leaders have championed free-market
economic reforms, and the economy is now expanding at an annual rate of about
4 percent.  It is expected to boom if the United States lifts its economic
embargo.
    "For Vietnamese this is incredible growth," said a Vietnamese official.
"I do not say our Government is perfect, but our human rights situation is
obviously better than China or Burma.  Surely this is the moment that
Vietnamese men and women should stay in Vietnam.  I think many people realize
if they leave now, they will miss the boom."
    The Government has tried to discourage illegal emigration by publicizing
the squalid conditions that the United States or any other nation will accept
them as refugees.
    Although Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Hanoi, State
Department employees frequently visit to interview candidates for emigration.
    So many Vietnamese enter the program that a chatered United States jumbo
jets regularly visits Ho Chi Minh City, the southern capital once known as
Saigon, to pick up families heading for the United States.
    Last year, the United Nations ended a growing stream so-called double
backers, purely economic migrants who had fled Vietnam at least once before.
Large numbers traveled to Hong Kong not by risky boat but safely, by bus,
through Southern China.
    The doublebackers left Vietnam a second or third time not because they
had any hope of being resettled in a third country, but to take advantage of
a repatriation package offered by the United Nations to Vietnamese who agreed
to return home:  about $400 per person, nearly double the annual per capital
income in Vietnam.
    In September 1991 the United Nations, seeing the program was being abused,
said it would not longer pay the repatriation fee to doublebackers.
    "Without that financial incentive, the doublebackers stopped leaving,"
said a Western diplomat.  "Simple as that.  The word went out among the
general population that the United Nations and the world community couldn't
help them anymore.  People began to realize that it was probably smarter to
stay home."


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Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese