Boat people

Large number of asylum-seeking Indo-Chinese, Cuban, and Haitian refugees who fled their homelands, often in rickety boats

In both the South China Sea and the Caribbean Sea, a flood of desperate refugees sought illegally to enter the United States, producing a needed redefinition of the nation’s immigration policy.

The term “boat people” was first used to describe the massive number of Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees who fled in small boats in the aftermath of the Vietnam War in 1975. From the start of the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 until the mid-1980’s, nearly 2 million Vietnamese fled to neighboring countries in Southeast Asia, where they were placed in overcrowded refugee camps. There, they were joined by nearly a million Cambodians fleeing the murderous regime of Pol Pot and by Laotian Hill People (Hmong), who had worked closely with U.S. forces before Laos fell to the communist Pathet Lao. From these countries of first asylum, most refugees hoped to resettle permanently in the United States.

The U.S. government first reacted to this refugee crisis by ordering the Seventh Fleet to aid overcrowded and dilapidated refugee-laden boats in distress. Nevertheless, thousands of refugees are thought to have perished in storms and pirate attacks. In response to this human calamity, the United States established, through the United Nations, the Orderly Departure Program, in which the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and Australia agreed to be nations of resettlement. In return, Vietnam agreed to stop illegal departures and permit orderly emigration of people accepted by the resettlement nations. The program drew a distinction, however, between political refugees and economic refugees. To qualify for resettlement, refugees were required to undergo a lengthy screening process to determine their motives for resettlement. Only those fleeing political persecution, rather than economic hardship, would be accepted. From 1981 to 1990, nearly 281,000 Vietnamese refugees were resettled in the United States. Indo-Chinese boat people amounted to the largest single group of refugees ever accepted by Canada: Between 1975 and 1985, about 111,000 of them came to Canada. The peak year was 1980, when 35,000 were settled in Canada.

Cuban and Haitian Boat People

The term “boat people” was also applied in the early 1980’s to Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers, who tried to escape by sea from oppression and poverty at home. The Mariel boatlift began on April 15, 1980, and ended on October 31, 1980. During this period, in which Fidel Castro permitted the exodus of any Cuban wishing to migrate, over 125,000 Cubans arrived in southern Florida from Port Mariel, Cuba. Often, boats were filled far beyond capacity, and there were many instances of distress. As a result of active monitoring of the exodus by the U.S. Coast Guard, however, there were only twenty-seven recorded instances of drowning. Of the Cuban expatriates arriving in Florida, nearly three thousand were criminals sent from Cuban prisons. Hundreds more were mentally ill patients released from Cuban institutions.

Upon reaching the United States, the Cuban boat people were detained in processing centers in south Florida; however, the flood of refugees proved so great that centers were created in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arkansas to handle the overflow. Frustration with conditions in these centers and the slow rate of processing resulted in occasional riots. Following Castro’s ending of Cuba’s open immigration policy in November, 1980, the flood was reduced to a trickle.

Simultaneous with the Cuban exodus, thousands of Haitians boarded aged, rickety boats to escape abuses they were suffering under the regime of Jean-Claude Duvalier. In 1981, about twelve thousand Haitian boat people made it to the Bahamas on the first part of their journey to south Florida. However, on the second phase of the journey, most Haitian vessels were intercepted at sea. Passengers were placed in detention centers then sent back to Haiti, since most Haitians were viewed as economic refugees. An unknown number of Haitian boat people died at sea. The worst known incident was when the bodies of thirty Haitians washed up on the shore of Hillsborough Beach, Florida.

Within the United States, the differing treatment between Cuban and Haitian migrants produced charges of racism and hypocrisy. To reduce bad publicity and the human drama playing in the news, President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order 1234 on September 29, 1981, empowering the Coast Guard to intercept vessels outside U.S. territorial waters that were suspected of carrying undocumented immigrants and to escort those ships back to their countries of origin. Charges of racism continued throughout the 1980’s, however. The election of Haitian populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 reduced for a time Haitians’ desire to leave their country. However, the flood of refugees would resume in late 1991, after Bertrand was deposed in a military coup. Of the thirty-six thousand Haitians stopped at sea, only nine thousand were granted the right to seek asylum. Tens of thousands of others were able to land on U.S. shores undetected, however, immigrating illegally to the United States.

Impact

For the United States, the 1980’s witnessed a larger influx of asylum seekers than did any previous decade. Granting immigrant status to the large number of Indo-Chinese refugees helped relieve Americans’ sense of guilt over their rapid departure from that region and showed that loyalty would be rewarded. Granting immigrant status to most of the Cuban boat people served to embarrass the Castro regime; however, denial of equal status to Haitians raised serious issues of discrimination. It also set the stage for policies later in the decade, when asylum seekers who had been tortured by Central American right-wing regimes supported by the United States were classified as economic refugees, while those from left-wing nations economically devastated by U.S. sanctions were classified as political refugees.

Unlike the first wave of immigrants from Cuba and Indo-China, which had been composed largely of middle- and upper-class individuals, the influx of boat people during the 1980’s sprung largely from their nations’ lower classes. In this, the Laotian Hmong represent an extreme example of jungle mountain dwellers descending from their thatched huts into modern U.S. apartments in places such as Central California. For them, assimilation into American society would entail the most difficulties. It would be less difficult for the Cambodians who formed a large ethnic enclave in Long Beach, California. The Vietnamese, who established large communities in California and the Texas Gulf Coast, founded lucrative businesses in auto repair, nail care, commercial fishing, and food services. Cuban boat people who were granted immigrant status were rapidly absorbed into the already large south Florida Cuban community and became a revitalizing force for cities such as Miami.

Bibliography

García, María Christina. Havana, USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida, 1959-1994. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Analysis of Cuban immigration. Chapter 2 is devoted to the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Endnotes, index, and select bibliography.

Reimers, David M. Still the Golden Door: The Third World Comes to America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. A standard text for the study of contemporary U.S. immigration, both legal and illegal. Footnotes, index, and bibliography.

Vo, Nghia M. Vietnamese Boat People, 1954 and 1975-1992. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Analysis of the flight from Vietnam and subsequent resettlement; filled with many human-interest accounts. Footnotes, index, and bibliography.