Vietnam, U.S. agree to resume immigration programme
HANOI - The United States and Vietnam signed an agreement on Tuesday which allows those Vietnamese to immigrate who were not able to do so before a humanitarian programme ended in 1994.
A U.S. embassy statement said the agreement permitted "Vietnamese citizens who might have been eligible for resettlement in the United States under the former Orderly Departure Program" (ODP) to apply.
The programme enabled nearly 500,000 Vietnamese refugees and immigrants to resettle in the United States between January 1980 and September 1994, the U.S. Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City said.
"This new, limited program will apply to those persons who were unable to apply before the Orderly Departure Program closed on September 30, 1994 or who were unable to complete the application process," the statement said.
There are an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese in the United States, but those who went under the ODP had to have spent at least three years in Vietnam's re-education camps or worked for the U.S. government before the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.
The conflict, known as "the American War" to Vietnamese in which more than 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese died, ended when the communists overthrew the U.S.-backed South Vietnam government.
Since the two countries restored diplomatic relations in 1995, two-way trade has rocketed from just $451 million in that year to $6.4 billion in 2004 as Hanoi said it wanted to close the door to the past and move on.
Reuters - November 15, 2005.
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