Vietnam Repatriation Has Begun

The Associated Press

April 1, 2008 Tuesday 11:52 AM GMT

Immigration officials: US has started deporting thousands of illegal Vietnamese immigrants
DATELINE: SINGAPORE

Washington has started deportation proceedings against thousands of Vietnamese living illegally in the United States under a pact between the two countries, a top U.S. immigration official said Tuesday.

...those who have lived in the U.S. for more than 13 years would not be deported.

The repatriation pact applies to Vietnamese who entered the U.S. illegally after the former foes normalized relations in 1995. Some critics had expressed concern the agreement could include others who entered the U.S. in the 70s and 80s.

"We're just going to begin the process of returning individuals back to Vietnam," Myers said in an interview with The Associated Press during a visit to Singapore. "The Vietnamese government has been very cooperative and helpful in this process as we've identified particular cases to move forward on."

The agreement was completed in late January but took 60 days to go into effect, Myers said....many immigrants have been living with deportation orders for years, even decades...

from Lexis-Nexus

Lofgren's Statement on demonstrations in Hanoi

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February 12, 2008 Tuesday
REP. LOFGREN ISSUES STATEMENT ON VIETNAMESE RELIGIOUS LIBERTIES
States News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON

The following information was released by the office of California Rep. Zoe Lofgren:

Yesterday, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) met with a group of Vietnamese clergy from the Diocese of San Jose, California and agreed to make efforts on behalf of Catholics in Vietnam. She released the following statement in response to recent accounts that Vietnamese Catholics have held numerous demonstrations for religious liberty in Hanoi.

The regime in Hanoi must take firm and concrete action to prevent further religious and human rights violations against the Archdiocese of Hanoi and the Catholic faithful in Vietnam. The time has come for the government of Vietnam to recognize the right of religious groups to practice their faiths free of harassment and oppression. For far too long, people of faith have suffered under Hanoi' repressive and brutal rule.

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren is the Chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. She also Chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections and serves on the House Homeland Security Committee. Congresswoman Lofgren is Chair of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation consisting of 34 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives from California.

from Lexus Nexus Academic

Looking again at the U.S. -Vietnam Deportation Plan

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San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)
February 13, 2008


U.S.-Vietnam deportation plan needs second look

For years, America has offered a beacon of hope and freedom for people from all over the world. That's one big reason the United States has more than 1 million immigrants from Vietnam, many of whom fled war and oppression in their homeland.

So it's disturbing that U.S. immigration officials, under a new Washington-Hanoi repatriation pact, soon will begin deporting undocumented Vietnamese back to the authoritarian country they left. This reversal of longstanding practice is troubling on political and humanitarian grounds. Officials should hold off on the deportations until Congress can review the situation more closely, as 13 lawmakers have suggested.

To be sure, many of the illegal immigrants who could be sent back have criminal convictions in the United States. Those who have committed serious felonies, such as murder, kidnapping or child sexual abuse should not be given refuge here. But those convicted of lesser crimes, have already completed jail time or simply overstayed their visas are another matter. It makes sense to take a closer look at these individual cases.

The pact signed in late January affects about 1,500 Vietnamese nationals who arrived here on or after July 12, 1995, and are in deportation proceedings or have received a final deportation order. The pact doesn't affect those who arrived earlier, since the United States did not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam then.

Overall, there are about 8,000 Vietnamese nationals facing deportation; about 7,000 of them have criminal convictions.

The United States has repatriation agreements with many countries, but most of them are not authoritarian. Vietnam is unique because of its legacy of war and persecution, the U.S. role in Vietnam's history and the poor human rights record of the communist government in Hanoi. Its unsatisfactory record has been recently documented by the U.S. State Department, among others.

Returnees would likely face abuse or discrimination from a government that doesn't look kindly on their leaving in the first place. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who heads a House subcommittee on immigration, notes that the United States doesn't send illegal Cuban immigrants back to Fidel Castro's regime.

The United States has long been respected for welcoming foreigners, who enrich and strengthen American society. And the United States has served as a model for freedom and democracy. Immigration officials should tread carefully in order to uphold those ideals.

Information on the U.S./Vietnam Repatriation Agreement

From the Southeast Asian Resource Action Center (SEARAC)

Frequently Asked Questions About
The U.S. and Vietnam Repatriation Agreement

Q: What is the repatriation agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam?
A: On January 22, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced that the governments of the United States and Vietnam signed a repatriation agreement. This agreement now makes it possible for Vietnamese nationals who arrived in the United States on or after July 12, 1995, and who have received final orders of removal, to be deported to Vietnam. Prior to this, the Vietnamese government did not have a formal agreement with the United States to accept deportees from this country.

Q: Who will be deported?
A: ICE states that this new agreement will impact nearly 1,500 Vietnamese individuals currently living in the U.S. This agreement will only affect those who:

• arrived in the U.S. on or after July 12, 1995; and
• have received orders for removal for a violation of U.S. laws (including criminal offenses and immigration violations); and
• who is not a citizen of the U.S. or any other country besides Vietnam; and
• who currently does not have residence in another country.

Vietnamese citizens who arrived in the U.S. before July 12, 1995 are not affected by this repatriation agreement. Vietnamese Americans who have not broken any U.S laws and/or individuals who are already U.S. citizens will also not be subject to deportation.

In the event that an individual who immigrated to the U.S. from a third country where that person has permanent residence is ordered removed from the U.S., the agreement states that “the U.S. government will seek to return that person to the third country or consider allowing that person to stay in the U.S., before requesting removal to Vietnam.”

Q: How long will this agreement last?
A: The agreement will be valid for five years and will be automatically extended every three years afterwards unless one government provides written agreement not to extend it.

Q: Can the agreement be changed in the future?
A: Yes. The agreement may be amended or supplemented in the future through written agreement between the U.S. and the Vietnamese governments.


SEARAC Page 1
01/2008






Q: If I have an order of removal but came to the U.S. as a refugee before July 12, 1995, should I apply for my citizenship now to avoid deportation in the future?
A: The repatriation agreement does not affect those who arrived in the U.S. before July 12, 1995, even if you have an order of removal. However, if you already have an order of removal, you are not eligible for naturalization. If you do not have an order of removal and would like to obtain your citizenship but you have a criminal background, you should consult an immigration lawyer before applying. Please keep in mind that not all lawyers are knowledgeable about immigration law. If you have questions about your specific situation, you should seek an immigration lawyer who is knowledgeable of deportation issues.

Q: Why should I care about deportation issues?
A: Current deportation laws deny individuals who are not yet citizens (including immigrants and refugees who have their green cards) due process. In 1996, Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act which significantly impacted deportation laws in the following ways:

• The number of deportable offenses increased through the expanded definition of what constitutes an “aggravated felony.” Individuals can now be ordered deported for a number of criminal offenses, even minor ones such as shoplifting, minor drug possessions, writing a bad check—an individual was even deported to Cambodia for urinating in public.

• The laws were made retroactive, meaning that individuals who committed their crimes many years ago, even if they have served all of their court ordered sentence, can still be ordered deported.

• Immigration judges no longer have the ability to consider individual circumstances of those being ordered deported. For example, even if an individual committed a minor crime eight years ago, has served all of their time and have since lived a law abiding life, started a family and is the primary provider for his family, immigration judges are unable to take factors such as these into consideration, and the individual can automatically be subject to deportation.

Q: What can I do?
A: SEARAC encourages Southeast Asian Americans to learn and educate others about immigration and deportation policies and how they impact Southeast Asian refugee communities. You can also educate your members of congress about the impact unfair deportation policies have on our families and our communities.

Q: Where can I find additional resources on deportation?

• Additional information on the impact of deportation on Southeast Asian American communities can be found at: http://www.searac.org/advocacy.html, click on Issue Area: Deportation on the right column.

• A Toolkit for Change, which is complete with a timeline of one young Southeast Asian American deportee’s experience, fact sheets and a sample letter to members of congress, can be found at:
http://www.searac.org/sentencedhome-toolkit.pdf.

• Sentenced Home, a documentary showing the impact deportation laws have on three young Cambodian American men and their families can be found at:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/sentencedhome/film.html

• General information on detention and deportation issues can be found at: www.detentionwatchnetwork.org, www.rightsworkinggroup.org, and http://www.ilrc.org/immigrantjusticenetwork/.

for more information from SEARAC click the title of this post

Previously noted on Immigration Prof Blog

The LA Times on the Vietnamese Deportations

The silence on this is amazing. Perhaps it is all the hype about the presidential campaigns that is keeping people distracted - somthing has kept the news regarding this deportation agreement in just a few newspapers.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-vietnamese24jan24,1,5097023.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

From the Los Angeles Times

A jolt in new Vietnam pact

Vietnamese American reaction to the accord allowing deportations to their homeland is conflicted, often bitter.

By My-Thuan Tran and Christopher Goffard
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

January 24, 2008

To U.S. officials, a new pact announced this week with Vietnam, allowing the government to deport illegal immigrants, was almost routine -- a straightforward matter of treating Vietnam like other nations.

But for many among the tens of thousands of immigrants in Orange County, the nation's largest Vietnamese population center, nothing about their homeland is routine. Tuesday's announcement of the long-negotiated pact has stirred sometimes-bitter debate within a community where loathing of Vietnam's communist government remains white hot.

"The Vietnamese have already been persecuted. I am afraid that sending those people back would give them another life sentence," said Loc Nam Nguyen, director of the Immigration and Refugee Department of Catholic Charities in Los Angeles.

Until now, most Vietnamese in the United States could not be deported back to Vietnam because many had left as refugees and Vietnam was unwilling to take them back. The repatriation pact, announced Tuesday after 10 years of negotiations, affects about 1,500 Vietnamese nationals -- many of them described by the U.S. government as people who were convicted of crimes in this country -- who arrived in the United States after July 12, 1995, when the two countries resumed diplomatic relations. The repatriations are scheduled to begin in two months.

In addition to these 1,500 people, another 6,200 Vietnamese nationals have received final deportation notices. However, because they arrived in the U.S. before 1995, they cannot be returned to Vietnam under the new pact. Instead, they face possible deportation to a third country, according to the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In all, roughly 1.5 million Vietnamese Americans live in the United States, many clustered in enclaves in Orange County, San Jose and Houston.

The repatriation agreement underscores the growing economic and diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam, even as many Vietnamese immigrants here abjure personal and business ties with their home country.

The struggle of many Vietnamese to flee their homeland -- on rickety boats, in military plane convoys to Camp Pendleton -- remains the founding story of large immigrant enclaves. As a result, many reacted with anger or hesitation to the idea of returning any Vietnamese to communist control.

Lan Quoc Nguyen, an attorney who serves on the Garden Grove school board, said that after the agreement was announced he received frantic calls from members of the community who worried it might affect them.

"For those who go back to Mexico, they go back to their families and nothing happens to them," Nguyen said. "But for people who go back to Vietnam, it's a totally different ballgame. They will be discriminated against. They will be denied household registration and even identification papers because they cannot provide their background in the bureaucracy process. They will have a hard time finding jobs."

But the reaction was neither unanimous nor one-dimensional. Many Vietnamese immigrants are also strongly conservative. The conflict between anger at the communists and distaste for lawbreakers led to mixed feelings.

Lac Tan Nguyen, president of the Vietnamese American Community of Southern California, spent two years in a communist reeducation camp before fleeing on a raft in 1982 and detests the government in Hanoi, which he has denounced in dozens of protests. Yet he doesn't think lawbreakers deserve to stay in the U.S.

"I would like to give people a second chance to make corrections and redo their lives in the United States," he said. But "the people who don't respect the law have abused their freedom here."

A group of men drinking coffee Wednesday at the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster also said deporting criminals who violated U.S. laws was the right thing to do.

"It follows the law. There are thousands of good people who want to come here from Vietnam who can't," said Du Nguyen, 62, who came here in 1975.

"Returning criminals to Vietnam is better for society here," he said. "They make the society here dirty."

Minh Dang, 56, of Westminster, who arrived in 1989, believes political refugees should be allowed to stay but had little sympathy for criminals. "We pay taxes to take care of criminals in prisons here," he said. "If they are criminals they deserve to be sent back."

Reaction in Washington was swift. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) and 12 other lawmakers condemned the arrangement with Vietnam in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, demanding that the measure not be implemented until Congress approves it.

Lofgren, who represents the congressional district with the highest number of Vietnamese Americans, cited Vietnam's "extensive and continuing record of human rights violations," saying in the letter that "it is appalling and unbelievable that this administration would even consider returning those who escaped communism back to the clutches of the very communists that they escaped."

In recent years, the State Department has described the human rights situation in Vietnam as "unsatisfactory" and detailed a litany of violations, including limits on free speech and the denial of swift trials. Other groups, such as Amnesty International and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, have also documented human rights violations in Vietnam.

But advocates for greater immigration controls applauded the repatriation memo. "The mistake was normalizing relations with Vietnam a decade ago without such a memorandum of understanding," said Mark Krikorian, director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies. He dismissed concerns about Vietnam's human rights record.

"There are a lot of bad countries in the world, but it ain't Auschwitz," he said, describing it instead as "authoritarian."

Charlie Manh, a lawyer from Westminster, expressed concern that the pact would target those who overstayed their visitor or work visas, or those who came here legally and committed crimes but have rebuilt their lives.

"If you look into the real details, some don't deserve to be deported," Manh said. "For those with extreme hardship and the fact that they don't have any more family members over there, the law should have exceptions for them not to be deported."

In 2002, the U.S. and Cambodia signed an agreement for the deportation of Cambodian nationals who were convicted of aggravated felonies.

Assemblyman Van Tran (R-Garden Grove) said he feared deportees could be harassed or intimidated in Vietnam.

"There has to be stringent oversight to ensure that the people are not politically persecuted when they go back to Vietnam," he said. "There are very legitimate concerns, given Vietnam is still a one-party totalitarian state."

my-thuan.tran@latimes.com

christopher.goffard@ latimes.com

Times staff writer Nicole Gaouette in Washington contributed to this report.

Vietnam to accept return of deported immigrants

In another strike at immigrant rights, Vietnam agreed this week to accept deportees leaving the United States. This could affect up to 8,000 people that are presently in deportation proceedings in the U.S. The 200 Vietnamese currently in custody will be the first deported when the agreement takes effect in 60 days (mid-March).

'Doua Thor, executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, an advocacy group in Washington, called the pact “alarming news.”'

January 23, 2008

Vietnam Agrees to the return of deportees from U.S.

by Julia Preston

New York Times

American immigration authorities reached an agreement on Tuesday with Vietnam that clears the way for Vietnamese immigrants under deportation orders to be sent back to their country.

Under a memorandum of understanding signed in Hanoi, Vietnam agreed to accept the return of those Vietnamese immigrants ordered deported by the United States, many of whom are convicted criminals, said Kelly A. Nantel, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency. Until now, Vietnam had generally refused to issue travel documents for the deportees.

The agreement immediately affects about 1,500 Vietnamese immigrants who came to the United States after diplomatic relations with Vietnam were restored on July 12, 1995, Ms. Nantel said. The head of the agency, Julie L. Myers, was in Hanoi on Tuesday to sign the memorandum, which takes effect in 60 days and will last for five years.

“This agreement allows us to carry out a judge’s order to remove individuals from our country in a safe and humane manner,” Ms. Myers said.

The agreement culminated 10 years of negotiations between the two countries, Ms. Nantel said. In all, about 8,000 Vietnamese immigrants in the United States are in deportation proceedings or have received final orders to be deported, Ms. Nantel said. Of those, she said, about 7,000 have criminal convictions, including some 4,500 Vietnamese convicted of aggravated felonies.

Only about 200 Vietnamese immigrants slated for deportation are in the custody of immigration authorities, Ms. Nantel said. Because of a Supreme Court ruling in 2001, the authorities have released immigrants under deportation orders after six months in detention if their countries would not accept them.

United States officials agreed to pay for the deportations of Vietnamese, officials said, and to provide 15 days’ notice to the Vietnamese government before carrying out a deportation.

Doua Thor, executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center, an advocacy group in Washington, called the pact “alarming news.” She said many Vietnamese immigrants facing deportation had hoped to resolve their legal cases and to be able to stay in the United States.

About one million people born in Vietnam are the fifth-largest national immigrant group in the United States, according to 2007 census figures. About 69 percent of them are naturalized citizens.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/us/23immig.html?ex=1358830800&en=46848568670fad3d&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Patriotism Erases Foreignness?

In 2004 Lea Ybarra published " Vietnam Veteranos" (University of Texas Press). His introduction (below) gives us a view of Latinos and the Vietnam War- and should provide some insight into Latinos and the Iraq War. Perhaps the U.S. Military believes that if the DREAM ACT is passed with the military service component - that immigrants will "give their lives" for their adopted country



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'"...In 1971 Ralph Guzmán brought the issue of race and war to the forefront and confirmed what many people in the Chicano movement had suspected. In his short but powerful article "Mexican American Casualties in Vietnam," Guzmán cites statistics that verify that Mexican American military personnel had higher death rates in Vietnam than all other ethnicities.

His analysis of casualty reports from January 1961 to February 1967 and from December 1967 to March 1969 shows that a high percentage of young men with Spanish surnames were killed in Vietnam and that a substantial number of them were involved in high-risk branches of the service, such as the U.S. Marine Corps.

Mexican Americans accounted for approximately 20 percent of U.S. casualties in Vietnam, although they made up only 10 percent of this country's population at the time.

According to Guzmán, Mexican Americans were under pressure to enlist because they had too often been considered foreigners in the land of their birth and felt they must prove their loyalty to the United States. Organizations like the GI Forum have long proclaimed the sizable contribution of the Mexican American soldier and point to impressive records of heroism in times of war. Guzmán emphasizes that there was a "concomitant number of casualties attending this Mexican American patriotic investment." There were also the desire for status that military life seemed to offer and a strong economic incentive, since many helped their families by sending money from their service allotments.

Relatively few of them avoided the draft by obtaining the college deferments available to students in the Vietnam era. Guzmán concludes: "Other factors motivate Mexican Americans to join the Armed Forces. Some may be rooted in the inherited culture of these people, while others may be imbedded in poverty and social disillusion. Whatever the real explanation, we do know that Mexican Americans are over-represented in the casualty reports from Vietnam and underrepresented in the graduating classes of our institutions of higher learning..."'

For link to Ybarra's book click title to this post