RP, US reach accord on Viet asylum-seekers

Manila and Washington have agreed to speed up the resettlement of hundreds of Vietnamese boat people who have been stranded in the Philippines for more than 15 years, the US government said yesterday.

Under the agreement, the United States will offer "resettlement interviews to the majority of the group, many of whom have relatives living in the United States," the US embassy said in a statement signed by US and Philippine officials.

"In an effort to offer resettlement to as many of those as possible, the United States will apply a generous refugee-screening standard when conducting interviews," it added without giving a timetable.

The Philippines, in turn, will make its "best efforts" to offer residency to those among the group of 1,855 Vietnamese whom the United States does not interview or approve for resettlement.

The two governments consider the plan to be "an extraordinary and important measure to finding a comprehensive humanitarian solution," the statement said.

The Vietnamese arrived in the Philippines at least 15 years ago and had previously been denied refugee status by the United States, which deemed them to be economic refugees rather than fleeing political persecution.

Manila allowed the group to buy land on the western island of Palawan after the government closed the last refugee camps in the mid-1990s, when it returned a number of other boat people to Vietnam.

Justice Secretary Merce—ditas Gutierrez and Kelly Ryan, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, signed the agreement yesterday. — Marvin Sy, AFP