Vietnam Emigration

An agreement that would free thousands of former Vietnamese prisoners to emigrate to the United States was hailed in Orange County Monday as "a major breakthrough," and one that could mean reunification of many families in the largest Vietnamese community in the nation. "Yes, this is good news because we have been waiting for so long," said Nhu Hao T. Duong, executive director for the Community Resources Opportunity Project in Santa Ana. "To us, this is a major breakthrough."

The last time Tung saw his brother, Tam, now 56, was in the final days of April, 1975, before Saigon fell to the Communist armies of North Vietnam. "I told him I was going to escape and leave Vietnam," Tung recalled Monday. "I asked him to come with me, but he said he couldn't go. He was a major in the South Vietnamese army and he said he had a responsibility to remain and ensure the safety of the South Vietnamese people."

The United States and Vietnam on Sunday announced an agreement for former political prisoners and their relatives to be resettled in the United States, with the first group of 3,000 expected to leave this year. A joint statement, released in Bangkok, said the two sides hope to begin by October "a program for the resettlement in the United States of released re-education center detainees and their close family members who wish to emigrate to the United States." The Communists toppled the U.S.

Delegates from 30 nations have drafted a plan asking Vietnam to curtail the exodus of "boat people" from its shores, officials at an international conference said. However, the group, which held a three-day meeting here this week, ruled out forcibly repatriating asylum-seekers who cannot show they are fleeing political persecution, officials said. "The rules are very clear . . . whenever refugees are repatriated, it has to be on a voluntary basis," said Jean Pierre Hocke, the U.N.

The United States flew a group of Amerasians direct to the Philippines from Vietnam on Monday, opening a new way out for these offspring of war. The U.S. Embassy in Bangkok said that a group of 121, including children fathered by U.S. servicemen during the Vietnam War and their relatives, flew to Manila as part of the Orderly Departure Program for Vietnamese emigrants.

Compassion, guilt and vivid images of near-swamped boatloads of half-dead Vietnamese on the shores of Southeast Asia drew the Western powers to Geneva in July, 1979. A deal was struck. The Vietnamese "boat people" would be given homes and new lives in the West. By that summer, more than 350,000 had reached rude camps in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. Few conditions were placed on their resettlement. They would be taken in.

Vietnam on Wednesday abruptly suspended plans to participate with U.S. technicians in a joint search for the remains of missing American servicemen. The Reagan Administration then accused Hanoi of breaking a year-old promise to cooperate on the issue. The dispute, touched off by an angry statement issued in Hanoi by Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, appears to reverse a recent warming trend in the relationship between the United States and Vietnam.

Vietnam could begin allowing former inmates of "re-education camps," detained for supporting the U.S.-backed Saigon government, to emigrate to the United States in the next several months, Radio Hanoi said Saturday. The radio said that after two days of talks in Hanoi between teams led by Deputy Foreign Minister Tran Quang Co and Robert L.