16-year wait over for 229 Vietnamese refugees

Despite "last-minute problems" at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, 229 erstwhile Vietnamese refugees flew to the United States yesterday for "permanent resettlement."

Despite some sadness and a few travel delays, the 178 adults and 51 children remained unruffled before boarding a chartered American Trans Air (ATA) flight bound for Los Angeles, California.

Baggage rearrangements failed to dampen the festive mood of the Vietnamese who had sought refuge in the Philippines since they fled their homeland in the 1980s.

"I feel very happy," said a weeping Phuong Vu, 46, among the first batch of 1,600 stateless refugees leaving for America.

Some were taking children who were born in the Philippines and lack any memory of the country their parents fled more than a decade ago.

Most of the Vietnamese left their homeland after the communists defeated the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Others were allowed to leave Vietnam in the 1980s under a US-sponsored program for Vietnamese whose fathers were believed to be American servicemen, and their relatives.

They were to undergo a few months of cultural training in the Philippines, but were then denied US resettlement rights after their documents were found to be incomplete or falsified.

When in 1996 the United Nations cut off funding for Vietnamese camps throughout Asia, and the Philippines and other countries began forcible repatriation of the refugees, then President Fidel Ramos allowed the Vietnamese to stay indefinitely under the supervision of the Roman Catholic Church.

Last year, the United States and the Philippines announced a joint plan to offer resettlement to 1,855 Vietnamese asylum seekers living in the Philippines since 1989.

While the eager refugees arrived early for the scheduled flight at 2:45 a.m. Monday, they found out their plane would only leave at 11 a.m. yesterday.

The ATA chartered flight TZ-6088, arranged and paid for by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to bring the refugees to the US, finally took off for Los Angeles at around 12 noon.

The long wait of the refugees, most of whom spoke fluent Filipino, started when the B757 of ATA arrived late in the country Sunday afternoon after a scheduled arrival of 1:15 p.m. Sunday.

Airport sources said the Vietnamese were waiting at the airport as early as 5 a.m.

When the Vietnamese refugees were finally allowed to line up at the four designated check-in counters at the NAIA I, it was learned that many were found to have luggage exceeding the maximum 100 pounds allowed per passenger.

At this stage, the Vietnamese spread the excess baggage among other refugees carrying less than the maximum allowable load.

The MIAA management had waived the payment of the P550 terminal fee for the refugees. — With AP