Lifelines for 500,000 People

By Daniel Hamon

Soon after the fall of South Vietnam to North Vietnamese military forces in 1975, the lives of South Vietnamese citizens who had assisted the United States or who had prominent roles in society were endangered. Rather than face death or likely internment in re-education camps, thousands of people fled the country by boat. This action was considered an illegal departure by the new Vietnamese government and was fraught with peril. Some estimates indicate that over one third of these "boat people" died at sea due to pirates, harsh weather, disease, and lack of food and water. In 1979, the United States established the Orderly Departure Program (ODP) which rescued and provided a new beginning to over 500,000 Vietnamese.

The U.S. State and Justice Departments established three main categories for Vietnamese refugee eligibility: I) family members of persons in the U.S. not currently eligible for immigrant visas, II) former employees of the U.S. government and III) persons closely associated or identified with the U.S. presence in Vietnam before 1975, including children of American citizens in Vietnam (Amerasians) and their immediate family members.

The State Department summarizes the accomplishments of ODP as follows:

The program, which had operated from the American Embassy in Bangkok and at a site in Ho Chi Minh City, successfully processed over 523,000 Vietnamese for admission to the U.S. as refugees, immigrants, and parolees. It reunited nearly 249,000 family members in the United States and provided resettlement to some 4,600 former U.S. Government employees. More than 89,700 Amerasian children and accompanying family members have been admitted to the United States since 1988 in a special ODP subprogram, along with some 167,000 former re-education camp detainees and their immediate family members under another special program begun in 1989.

And even though the ODP office in Thailand was closed in 1999, processing of the remaining cases was transferred to the Refugee Resettlement Section (RSS) of the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City starting that same year.  In December, 2006, the Refugee Resettlement Program was renamed the Humanitarian Resettlement Program and continued processing ODP applications until June, 2008.