Some Yearn to Return Home

Overly optimistic, some U.S. immigration officials had predicted that all the Vietnamese refugees would be settled in their new American homes within three months. Now that seems to have been just one more delusion. Red tape, a shortage of sponsors and sorely understaffed volunteer organizations have combined to keep more than 100,000 refugees billeted in four camps in the U.S. and on Guam. Only 24,000 refugees out of a total of 131,000 have moved out so far. Though the processing began to speed up last week, it remained agonizingly slow, and the displaced Vietnamese were increasingly anxious. A total of 1,264 have said that they want to go back home, and the number of those who would privately like to return is doubtless much higher.

The biggest headache of the resettling process is the granting of security clearances. At first all refugees needed them, but later the policy was changed to require clearances only for those over 17 years of age. And clearances were waived for all former employees of the U.S. Government, as well as for their spouses, children and parents. Five federal agencies, including the CIA and the State Department, must approve the clearances, and there are more bottlenecks than in a distillery. Says an Immigration and Naturalization Service officer: "You get five pieces of paper flying around on each of several thousand refugees, and you've got a problem." The refugees are fingerprinted and then are rigorously checked with all five Government agencies to determine any past criminal involvement or suspect political allegiances.

Proving Guilt. At Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, the security process has at last been streamlined so that a large family can be screened in two or three days instead often. There are 4,600 refugees at Eglin; almost 1,200 others have already been released from there, and the flow is continuing at 120 a day. California's Camp Pendleton, with a refugee population of 16,600, releases between 300 and 400 people a day. Fort Chaffee, Ark., sends about 200 people each day from its population of more than 24,000. Yet no sooner are their bunks emptied than others arrive to replace them, with some 40,000 refugees backed up and still to come from Guam. A fifth camp, which will eventually hold 15,000 refugees, opened last week at a military post at Indiantown Gap, Pa., to help handle the problem.

Security checks are stiff because a few Congressmen insist that they be. Many of the hard-liners are liberal Democrats. New York City's Elizabeth Holtzman still demands that anybody guilty of political repression in Viet Nam be barred from settling in the U.S. But just what constitutes "guilt"--and how to prove it--is highly debatable. Detroit's John Conyers hangs tough for strict regulation of the refugee influx because his unemployed constituents are concerned that the Vietnamese will increase the competition for jobs. The other major log jam is the lack of sponsors. Up until now, 17,000 groups or individuals have agreed to help provide food, clothing and shelter to refugees until they are selfsupporting; at least another 13,000 are needed to sponsor refugee families.

Hence most of the refugees simply sit and wait. For many, the sense of uncertainty will not end even with release from the camps and settlement in an American community. Says John Champlin, a Napa Valley, Calif., psychiatrist who is married to a Vietnamese: "Inevitably, everyone will have some sort of emotional crisis, probably within six months to a year. And within ten years, at least half will have tried to go back."

Very Sad. Nearly all of the 1,264 individuals who have requested repatriation so far are people who left Viet Nam without their families. Nguyen Than Danh, 26, a former South Vietnamese Air Force sergeant, says that he left involuntarily. In April a military plane he was riding in changed course in mid-flight and spirited its passengers to safety in Thailand. Danh's wife and five-month-old son are still in Viet Nam. "Maybe the new government will kill me," he says sorrowfully, "but I cannot live here without my family. I am very sad thinking that my son will grow up never knowing his father."

Vietnamese family ties are extraordinarily strong. "If you don't have a family, how can you live?" asks Le Minn Tan, 44, spokesman for 207 Fort Chaffee refugees who have decided to apply to return to Viet Nam. "We will never come back to the U.S., even if the V.C. say they will kill us. The men say that one day here is like one year in Viet Nam."

Names of those who want to return will be given to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. After interviews have determined that they do indeed wish repatriation, the U.N. will begin flying them back at its expense. Some elderly Vietnamese have explained the yearning to return with the classic outcasts' plaint: "I want to die in my own country." Most of the refugees, however, will still be left to struggle with all that red tape before they can even begin to make a new life in the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.