You may have heard that the Trump administration, in its ongoing aggression against immigrants, is resuming its efforts to deport thousands of protected Vietnamese refugees who have lived in the United States for decades -- many of them having fled the country during the Vietnam War.
The community is watching. A coalition of Vietnamese community members, and local, state and national immigrant, civil rights and human rights organizations are urging folks to speak out, sign this petition and let the Department of Homeland Security and Vietnam know the community is watching.
SIGN-ON AGAINST AMENDMENTS TO US-VIETNAM REPATRIATION AGREEMENT 2008
The petition demands that the protections afforded to Vietnamese immigrants under the current U.S.-Vietnam repatriation agreement be maintained, established in 2008, and oppose any amendments that further threaten to tear apart families and upend communities.
The petition has further information (also translated in Vietnamese):
This week, the Vietnamese Anti-Deportation Network (VADN) was alerted that the Vietnamese government will be meeting with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to renegotiate the current repatriation agreement starting on Sunday, December 9, 2018. This meeting is part of a continuing effort by the U.S. to push for the mass deportation of Vietnamese immigrants and could have extreme implications for the Vietnamese community by making all Vietnamese nationals with orders of removal vulnerable to deportation, regardless of when they came to the U.S.
As it currently stands, the U.S.-Vietnam repatriation agreement does not permit Vietnamese immigrants who came to the U.S. before July 12, 1995 to be deported. For Vietnamese citizens who immigrated to the U.S. from a third country where that person had a permanent residence and who were ordered removed from the U.S., the U.S. Government would return that person to the third country or consider allowing that person to stay in the U.S., before requesting removal to Vietnam. It also requires Vietnam and the U.S. to take into account family unity and other humanitarian factors when considering whether to remove an individual to Vietnam.
However, the current U.S. administration has blatantly disregarded this agreement and aggressively pushed to end the humanitarian protections afforded Vietnamese immigrants under it. In 2017 and 2018, record numbers of Vietnamese immigrants were deported from the U.S. to Vietnam, including a dozen pre-1995 individuals who were removed in express violation of the repatriation agreement. At the same time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also began detaining hundreds of Vietnamese immigrants in detention prisons across the country.
ICE's inhumane practices prompted the filing of a class action lawsuit against the federal government challenging the indefinite and purposeless detention of pre-1995 Vietnamese that ICE cannot remove. In October 2018, ICE finally admitted to the court that it would not be able to deport pre-1995 individuals and agreed to stop detaining them for prolonged periods of time.
Now, the U.S. government is continuing to double down on its efforts to ramp up deportations in our communities, putting ALL Vietnamese community members with final orders of removal at risk, regardless of whether they came to the U.S. before or after 1995.
We join with all immigrant, refugee, Black and Brown communities across this country to hold our government accountable to us. Sign-on to protect our families and communities, and demand that the current protections afforded to the Vietnamese community under the current Agreement be maintained.
Signed by,
The Vietnamese Anti-Deportation Network (VADN):
Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta, GA
Asian Pacific Islander Re-entry of Orange County
AARW: Dorchester Organizing & Training Initiative - Boston, MA
Mekong-NYC
SEAC - North Carolina
SEARAC - Washington, D.C.
VietLead - Philadelphia, South Jersey
VietUnity-East Bay, California
VietUnity-South Bay, California
Sign the petition here.
