NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Boat people

Boat people is a term (usually) referring to illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who arrive en masse in old or crudely-made boats. The term came into common use during the late 1970s with the mass departure of Vietnamese refugees from communist-controlled Vietnam, following the Vietnam War. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... Image File history File links Emblem-important. ... Boat people may refer to: Boat people, illegal immigrants who travel to a new country on boats Tanka (ethnic group), who live on fishing boats The Boat People (US band), a punk band from the United States The Boat People (Australian band), an indie pop band from Australia Category: ... Illegal immigration is the act of moving to or settling in another country or region, temporarily or permanently, in violation of the law or without documents permitting an immigrant to settle in that country. ... For other uses, see Boat (disambiguation). ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam Peopleâ€™s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000...

It is also a widely used form of migration or escape for people migrating from Cuba (Often Under the Cuban Adjustment Act or Wet-foot, Dry-foot policy), Haiti, Morocco, Vietnam or Albania. They often risk their lives on dangerously crude and overcrowded boats, to escape oppression or poverty in their home nations. In 2001, 353 asylum-seekers sailing from Indonesia to Australia drowned when their vessel sank. Many of the political refugees have also been attacked by pirates on the high seas or upon isolated islands, or have been turned away by unsympathetic governments and forced to return. A memorial statue in Hanko, Finland, commemorating the thousands of emigrants who left the country to start a new life in the United States Emigration is the act and the phenomenon of leaving ones native country to settle in another country. ... A boy from an East Cipinang trash dump slum in Jakarta, Indonesia shows what he found. ... SIEV-X stands for Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel X (the X means “unknown”). It is the name, coined by Tony Kevin, commonly used to refer to a dilapidated Indonesian fishing boat that was en-route to Christmas Island carrying over 400 asylum seekers. ...

Boat people are frequently a source of controversy in the nation they seek to immigrate to, such as the United States, Canada, Italy, Spain and Australia. Boat people are often forcibly prevented from landing at their destination, such as under Australia's "Pacific Solution", or they are subjected to mandatory detention after their arrival. Unlike the wave of Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s and early 1980s, most boat people arriving in Western countries, Australia or the USA have purchased their passage on large and overcrowded sea-worthy boats. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Mandatory detention in Australia. ... In Australia, the term mandatory detention describes the legislation of the Australian government to detain all persons entering the country or remaining in the country without a valid visa, including children. ...

Vietnam War boat people

Events resulting from the Vietnam War led many people in Cambodia, Laos, and especially Vietnam to become refugees in the late 1970s and 1980s, after the fall of Saigon. In Vietnam, the new communist government sent many people who supported the old government in the South to "re-education camps", and others to "new economic zones." An estimated 1 million people were imprisoned without formal charges or trials.^[1] 165,000 people died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps, according to published academic studies in the United States and Europe.^[1] Thousands were abused or tortured: their hands and legs shackled in painful positions for months, their skin slashed by bamboo canes studded with thorns, their veins injected with poisonous chemicals, their spirits broken with stories about relatives being killed.^[1] These factors, coupled with poverty, caused millions of Vietnamese to flee the country. In 1979, Vietnam was at war (Sino-Vietnamese War) with the People's Republic of China (PRC), and many ethnic Chinese living in Vietnam, who felt that the government's policies directly targeted them also became "boat people." On the open seas, the boat people had to confront forces of nature, and elude pirates. Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1700x2283, 810 KB) Beschreibung: BootsflÃ¼chtling aus Vietnam in einem FlÃ¼chtlingslager in Malaysia Quelle: FreePiP (Free Pictures Project) Fotograf: Benjamin Gimmel, BenHur File links The following pages link to this file: Boat people User:Grenavitar ... Image File history File links Download high resolution version (1700x2283, 810 KB) Beschreibung: BootsflÃ¼chtling aus Vietnam in einem FlÃ¼chtlingslager in Malaysia Quelle: FreePiP (Free Pictures Project) Fotograf: Benjamin Gimmel, BenHur File links The following pages link to this file: Boat people User:Grenavitar ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam Peopleâ€™s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000... Combatants Democratic Republic of Vietnam National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Republic of Vietnam Commanders Van Tien Dung Nguyen Van Toan Strength ~130,000 ~50,000 Casualties Trivial Unknown The Fall of Saigon (in Vietnamese: Sá»± kiá»‡n 30 thÃ¡ng 4, or April 30 Incident) was the... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Combatants Peoples Republic of China Socialist Republic of Vietnam Commanders Yang Dezhi VÄƒn Tiáº¿n DÅ©ng Strength 300,000+[1] 100,000+ from regular army divisions and divisions of the Public Security Army Casualties Disputed. ... For the community association, see Homeowners association. ... This article is about maritime piracy. ...

In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge regime murdered millions of people in the "Killing Fields" massacres, and many attempted to escape. Flag of Democratic Kampuchea Photos of genocide victims on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ) was the ruling political party of Cambodia -- which it renamed to Democratic Kampuchea -- from 1975 to 1979. ... See also: The Killing Fields. ...

Escape route

Would-be middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, would travel 1,100 km to Danang by road. On arrival, they would take refuge for up to two days in safe houses while waiting for fishing junks and trawlers to take small groups into international waters. Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnamese: ThÃ nh ChÃ Minh) is the largest city in Vietnam, located near the delta of the Mekong River. ... Da Nang (in Vietnamese: Quá»‘c Ngá»¯ ÄÃ Náºµng) is a major port city in the South Central Coast of Vietnam, on the coast of the South China Sea. ...

The boats, most usually not intended for navigating open waters, would typically head for busy international shipping lanes some 240km to the east. The lucky ones would succeed in being rescued by freighters and taken to Hong Kong, some 2,200 km away^[2]. The unlucky ones would face a two-week long perilous journey in rickety craft.

Refugee camps

The plight of the boat people became an international humanitarian crisis. There were untold miseries, rapes and murders on the South China Sea committed by Thai pirates who preyed on the refugees who had sold all their possessions and carried gold with them on the trips. The UNHCR, under the auspices of the United Nations, set up refugee camps in neighbouring countries to process the "boat people". They got the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize for this. Filipino name Tagalog: Luzon Sea Portuguese name Portuguese: Mar da China Meridional Vietnamese name Vietnamese: The South China Sea is a marginal sea south of China. ... Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (established December 14, 1950) protects and supports refugees at the request of a government or the United Nations and assists in their return or resettlement. ... UN and U.N. redirect here. ... Lester B. Pearson after accepting the 1957 Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is the name of one of five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel. ...

Camps were set up in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Indonesia. According to stories told by the Vietnamese refugees, the conditions at the camps were bad. Not much of the generous aid money actually got to the refugees. And in particular, refugees at Thai camps were maltreated and many were brutally bullied by the Thai guards. Most of the refugees came from the former South Vietnam. However, soon after the first wave between 1975-1978, North Vietnamese from seaside cities such as Haiphong started to escape and land in Hong Kong. Among them were genuine ethnically Chinese Vietnamese refugees who escaped from Vietnam and headed to China and the city of Hong Kong. Look up Aid in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Anthem Thanh niÃªn HÃ nh KhÃºc (Call to the Citizens) Capital Saigon Language(s) Vietnamese Government Republic Last PresidentÂ¹ Duong Van Minh Last Prime minister Vu Van Mau Historical era Cold War - Regime change June 14, 1955 - Dissolution April 30, 1975 Area - 1973 173,809 kmÂ² 67,108... The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN), or less commonly, Vietnamese Democratic Republic (Vietnamese: Viá»‡t Nam DÃ¢n Chá»§ Cá»™ng HÃ²a), also known as North Vietnam, was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, September 2nd1945 and was recognized by the Peoples Republic of China and the... Haiphong (Vietnamese: Háº£i PhÃ²ng, Chinese æµ·é˜², HÇŽifÃ¡ng) is the third most populous city in Vietnam. ...

One forgotten group of Vietnamese boat people were those who escaped by land across the Cambodian and Thailand border. They did not travel by boat, but they ended up at the same camps just like those who braved the seas. The Orderly Departure Program from 1979 until 1994 was one such program that helped to resettle refugees in the United States. In this program, refugees were asked to go back to Vietnam and waited for assessment. If they were deemed to be eligible to be re-settled in the US according to the criteria the US government had established, they would be allowed to migrate to the USA. After ODP, there was another program called Humanitarian Operation. In this program, many former Southern Vietnamese who were involved in the former regime or working for the US would be allowed to migrate to the US provided that they had suffered harsh persecutions by the communist regime after 1975. Also the half-American children in Vietnam also allowed to migrate along with their mothers or foster parents. This also sparked a feverish wave of rich Vietnamese parents buying the right from the real mothers or foster parents. They paid money (in the black market) to transfer the half-American children into their custody, then applied for visa to migrate to the USA. Most of these half-American children were born of American soldiers and illiterate prostitutes. They were subject of discrimination, poverty, neglects and abuse. It was a big headache for the US to accept and deal with these children that the Vietnamese government were glad to be rid of. The United States and Vietnam signed an agreement on November 15, 2005, which allows those Vietnamese to immigrate who were not able to do so before the humanitarian operation program ended in 1994. Effectively this new agreement was the extension and also final chapter of the HO program. The Orderly Departure Program was a program to permit immigration of Vietnamese refugees to the United States of America, instituted in 1979 under the auspices of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. ...

Hong Kong adopted the "port of first asylum policy," and received over 100,000 of them in the city at its peak in the late 1980s. Many refugee camps were set up in its territories. Frequent violent clashes between the boat people and security forces caused public outcry and mounting concerns in the early 1990s since many camps are very close to high-density residential areas.

For Australia, there was a major policy shift by the Fraser government, which abolished the White Australia policy by letting over 100,000 Vietnamese refugees in such a quick pace. The countries that accepted most of these refugees were: This badge from 1906 shows the use of the expression White Australia at that time The White Australia policy is a generic term used to describe a collection of historical legislation and policies, intended to restrict non-white immigration to Australia, and to promote European immigration, from 1901 to 1973. ...

By late 1980s, Western Europe, the United States and Australia received fewer Vietnamese refugees ^{[citation needed]}. It became much harder to get visas to settle in these countries. The refugees faced prospects of staying years in the camps and ultimate repatriation back to Vietnam. They were branded, rightly or wrongly, as economic refugees. By the mid-1990s, the number of refugees fleeing from Vietnam had dwindled. Many refugee camps were closed. Most of the well educated or those with genuine refugee status had already been accepted by receiving countries^{[citation needed]}. Entry visa valid in Schengen treaty countries. ... Repatriation (from late Latin repatriare - to restore someone to his homeland) is the process of return of refugees or soldiers to their homes, most notably following a war. ...

There were some unwritten rules in the mind of immigration officials from Western countries. They preferred to accept married couples, young families and women over 18 years old, leaving single men and minors to languish at the camps for years. Among these unwanted, those who worked and studied hard and involved themselves in constructive refugee community activities were eventually accepted by the West by recommendations from UNHCR workers. Hong Kong was open about its willingness to take the remnants at its camp, but only some refugees took up the offer. Many refugees would have been accepted by Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, but hardly any wanted to settle in these countries.

The market reforms of Vietnam, the imminent return of Hong Kong to China by Britain and the financial incentives for voluntary returning to Vietnam caused many boat people to elect to return to Vietnam during the 1990s. Consequently, most remaining asylum seekers were voluntarily or forcibly repatriated to Vietnam, although a very small number (about 2,500) were granted residency by the Hong Kong Government in 2002, marking an end to the Vietnam boat people history. In 2005, the remaining refugees in the Philippines (around 200) were granted asylum in Canada, Norway and the United States.

A parody variation of the term "yacht people" has been applied to affluent Chinese immigrating to Canada and the United States from Hong Kong and other locations.

Films

Ann Hui On-Wah (許鞍華, pinyin: Xǔ Ānhuá, born May 23, 1947) is a Hong Kong film director, one of the most critically acclaimed amongst the Hong Kong New Wave. ... Journey from the Fall (Vietnamese: ) is an independent movie by writer/director/editor Ham Tran, about the Vietnamese reeducation camp and boat people experience following the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975. ... Ham Tran is a Vietnamese American (Ethnic Chinese) film writer/editor/director. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Combatants Democratic Republic of Vietnam National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Republic of Vietnam Commanders Van Tien Dung Nguyen Van Toan Strength ~130,000 ~50,000 Casualties Trivial Unknown The Fall of Saigon (in Vietnamese: Sá»± kiá»‡n 30 thÃ¡ng 4, or April 30 Incident) was the... Bolinao 52 is a documentary by Vietnamese American director Duc Nguyen about the Vietnamese boat people ship that was originally stranded in the pacific ocean in 1988. ... Year 1988 (MCMLXXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link displays 1988 Gregorian calendar). ...

Notes

Contents

Vietnam War boat people

Escape route

Refugee camps

Films

Notes

See also

External links

Contents

Vietnam War boat people GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Escape route

Refugee camps

Films

Notes

See also

External links

Vietnam War boat people