[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 125 (Monday, July 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H7993-H7994]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              ACCORD ON BOAT PEOPLE IN DANGER OF COLLAPSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Nebraska [Mr. Bereuter] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, as the chairman of the Asia and Pacific 
Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, this 
Member has spoken several times regarding the 

[[Page H 7994]]
damage done by section 2104 of H.R. 1561, the American Overseas 
Interests Act, passed by this body on June 8. The section, dealing with 
the issue of Indochinese boat people, is causing all the problems that 
this Member and others predicted. More on that subject now.
  On June 20, the Washington Post cataloged the devastating impact of 
this legislation in an article datelined Hong Kong. This Member quotes.

       At first, no one knew exactly why a riot erupted at the 
     Hong Kong refugee detention center on May 20th. Thousands of 
     Vietnamese violently battled back with stones, makeshift 
     spears and anything else they could throw, leaving 168 police 
     officers and 73 Vietnamese injured. Refugee workers soon got 
     a clue as to what was happening when they spotted some of the 
     rioting Vietnamese waving tiny American flags and portraits 
     of President Clinton.

  Quoting from the Post:

       The evidence became ironclad about a week later, when 200 
     Vietnamese who had volunteered to go home unexpectedly 
     changed their minds, just 48 hours before their scheduled 
     June 1st departure. They told UN officials that they would 
     rather wait in Hong Kong camps until the U.S. Congress 
     decided on a House-passed bill providing for the rescreening 
     of up to 20,000 Vietnamese refugees for possible admittance 
     into the United States.

  This Member had predicted before this body that this provision in 
H.R. 1561 would raise false expectations of resettlement among 
Indochinese boat people, causing violence in the camps and stopping 
voluntary repatriation. Unfortunately, as the Post article amply 
demonstrates, this prediction has come to pass.
  Whether this ill-advised provision ever becomes law--and the Clinton 
administration has already made it clear that this issue is among those 
certain to provoke a Presidential veto--the damage has already been 
done. The article continues, and I quote:

       A carefully constructed global agreement signed six years 
     ago in Geneva, which laid out a formula for screening the 
     Vietnamese boat people and sending home those not deemed 
     genuine refugees fleeing persecution, seems in danger of 
     collapse. And a more recently agreed-upon timetable for 
     finally resolving the two-decade-old ``boat people'' crisis 
     by year's end now looks unlikely.

  A Hong Kong refugee official is quoted in the article saying:

       Like a bolt of lightening, initiatives were taken in 
     Congress that have thrown this program out of gear. This 
     provision is an unhelpful intervention which has raised false 
     hopes.

  The official concludes that resolving the boat people crisis was 
``not easy before Congress. It is even more difficult now.''
  Mr. Speaker, this body must understand that amendments we approve or 
reject, bills we approve, laws we enact, actions we take, and 
statements we make oftentimes do have an important and sometimes 
immediate impact in the real world, outside the beltway. The best 
intentions, Mr. Speaker, do not necessarily make good legislation. At 
the time this body debated this provision and rejected the Bereuter-
Obey amendment, we had ample warning of the dangerous situation we were 
creating. Despite pressure brought to bear on them, several refugee 
advocacy groups with years of experience dealing with Indochinese 
refugees had already publicly denounced the provision as dangerous and 
irresponsible, as had the United Nations High Commissioner for 
Refugees, the State Department, and many interested refugee 
resettlement and host governments.
  The same article continues that the problem goes beyond Hong Kong, 
which is the host of more than 22,000 Indochinese asylum seekers--
incidently, more than one-half of whom come from North Vietnam and have 
no claim to refugee status based on close ties to the United States 
military from the Viet Nam era. The article quotes UNHCR officials 
stating that the legislation has stopped voluntary repatriation at 
camps throughout the region--not only in Hong Kong, but also in 
Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia.
  This Member again quotes the Post.

       There also has been violence elsewhere. In Malaysia, many 
     thousands of Vietnamese broke through the fence around the 
     camp on June 5th and paraded through the streets waving 
     banners. Police fired tear gas to disburse them, and 23 
     people were reported injured. Violence flared again in Hong
      Kong on June 7, when Vietnamese rioted, torched a building, 
     stole police uniforms and looted rations. Police fired 800 
     rounds of tear gas to quell the disturbance. Six 
     Vietnamese and two police officers were injured.

  Mr. Speaker, this misguided provision in H.R. 1561 was based on the 
view that there were serious flaws in the screening process by which 
the boat peoples' claims to political refugee status were evaluated. 
The intent of this provision is to force a massive rescreening in the 
camps of all 40,000 camp residents to give them another chance to 
demonstrate their claim to refugee status. Many objective observers, 
including some refugee advocates, reject this contention and oppose 
massive rescreening. Moreover, the Southeast Asian nations where the 
camps are located have made it clear that they will not countenance a 
lengthy rescreening process which will delay closure of the camps and 
could prompt another refugee outflow from Vietnam.
  It would be naive to think that the screening of tens of thousands of 
boat people by local officials, even though under close supervision by 
the UNHCR, could have been accomplished without error or abuse. In 
fact, this Member has requested UNHCR reconsideration of 15 cases of 
Vietnamese asylum seekers who would seem to have a plausible case for 
refugee status. While this Member certainly is willing to intervene 
when specific cases of possible error are brought to his attention, he 
opposes strongly massive rescreening of asylum seekers in the refugee 
camps.
  Moreover, it appears from information provided by UNHCR and 
nongovernment organizations monitoring boat people who have returned to 
Vietnam, that massive rescreening in the camps is not necessary. These 
organizations attest that there is no credible evidence of persecution 
of returnees in Vietnam. So why shouldn't the screened out asylum 
seekers in the camps return to Vietnam? Recent testimony by the 
American nongovernmental organization [NGO], World Vision, concludes 
that screened out boat people have been able to return to Vietnam in 
safety and dignity. The World Vision witness added that, in addition to 
the official UNHCR monitoring, the presence of American NGO's 
throughout Vietnam has provided returnees ``a number of options should 
they wish to raise a question or register a concern.''
  The problem the international community now faces, however, is that 
the damage caused by this legislation has already been done. The 
Bereuter-Obey amendment which would have deleted this highly 
problematic section of H.R. 1561 was rejected and, as predicted by this 
Member, the damage was done. Therefore, this Member calls on all 
parties: UNHCR, resettlement and first asylum countries, Vietnam, the 
administration, NGO's, and Members of Congress to work out a pragmatic 
solution to the current impasse. The question we are now facing is how 
to get the 40,000 plus screened out asylum seekers to return 
voluntarily to Vietnam. While this Member does not have a concrete 
solution to offer at this time, it seems that some system of 
reinterviewing asylum seekers after their return to Vietnam could offer 
an incentive for the boat people to return, while at the same time 
maintain the international consensus on this issue.
  Mr. Speaker, this Member pledges his support for efforts to devise 
concrete and pragmatic solutions to this intractable humanitarian 
problem which the House by its unfortunate action helped to create. 
This Member calls on other Members of this body, including those who 
disagrees with him on this legislation and supported the gentleman from 
New Jersey [Mr. Smith], to make a similar pledge.


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