US seeks to deport thousands of treaty protected Vietnamese

HO CHI MINH CITY: The United States is seeking to send thousands of immigrants from Vietnam back to the communistruled country despite a bilateral agreement that should protect most from deportation, according to Washington’s former ambassador to Hanoi.

A “small number” of people protected by the agreement have already been sent back, the former ambassador, Ted Osius, told Reuters in an interview.

Osius said that many of the targeted immigrants were supporters of the now defunct U.S.backed state of South Vietnam, and Hanoi would see them as destabilising elements.

“These people don’t really have a country to come back to,” he said. Many of those targeted would have come to the United States as refugees after the end of the Vietnam War.

Osius said the push by the Trump administration started in April last year and contributed to his resignation in October.

A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE) spokesman, Brendan Raedy, said that as of December last year, there were 8,600 Vietnamese nationals in the United States subject to deportation and “7,821 have criminal convictions”.

The Trump administration has labelled Vietnam and eight other countries “recalcitrant” for their unwillingness to accept their deported nationals back.

The Vietnamese immigrants, most of whom are legal US residents but not citizens, are in a unique position, however.

According to Osius, most of those targeted for deportation arrived in the United States prior to 1995, the year diplomatic relations between Vietnam and the United States were resumed after the Vietnam War.

A 2008 bilateral agreement between Vietnam and the United States states that “Vietnamese citizens are not subject to return to Vietnam” if they “arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995”. — AFP