Sooner or later, they will come for you, too. In its ongoing assault on immigrants, the Trump administration is reportedly resuming its efforts to deport certain protected Vietnamese immigrants who have lived in the United States for decades -- many of them having fled the country during the Vietnam War.
Basically, the administration has now decided that Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the country before the 1995 establishment of diplomatic ties between the United States and Vietnam are subject to standard immigration law -- meaning they are all eligible for deportation.
From The Atlantic:
The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are "violent criminal aliens." But Washington and Hanoi have a unique 2008 agreement that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995 -- the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War.
The White House unilaterally reinterpreted the agreement in the spring of 2017 to exempt people convicted of crimes from its protections, allowing the administration to send back a small number of pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants, a policy it retreated from this past August. Last week, however, James Thrower, a spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Hanoi, said the American government was again reversing course.
Washington now believes that the 2008 agreement fails to protect pre-1995 Vietnamese immigrants from deportation, Thrower told The Atlantic. This would apply to such migrants who are either undocumented or have committed crimes, and this interpretation would not apply to those who have become American citizens.
More here: Trump Moves to Deport Vietnam War Refugees
