Painful Act of Being Born Again

For a time last week, it seemed that the 127,000 South Vietnamese making their way toward a new life in the U.S. were destined to spend many excruciating months in a bureaucratic limbo. In an excess of administrative caution, the Immigration and Naturalization Service decreed that, as required by law, each refugee would have to pass security checks by no fewer than five federal agencies, including the FBI and CIA. The flow of newcomers, who had been moving fairly quickly from Guam to military bases in the continental U.S., and thence into new American homes, diminished to a trickle. One day only three refugees left Florida's Eglin Air Force Base. Guam had reached saturation point, with 50,000 people jammed into its Tent City. "I only hope it doesn't sink," said one beleaguered State Department official in Washington. Camp authorities called for voluntary water rationing. The danger of disease was heightened by the condition of the toilets and the sewage systems, which ranged from adequate to squalid.

Finally, the INS replaced bureaucracy with sanity. The agency waived the time-consuming security checks for all refugees under 17, all former employees of the U.S. Government and all spouses of American citizens along with their immediate families. That could account for fully half of the refugees. By week's end, 16,800 had been settled in the U.S. and the flow of refugees out of the camps had begun to increase. Meantime, Congress, moving with unaccustomed speed, approved some $405 million to transport, feed and house the refugees and generally help them to resettle.

Finding Sponsors. The three refugee camps in the continental U.S. --Eglin, California's Camp Pendleton, and Arkansas' Fort Chaffee--were showing signs of strain as the massive resettlement program ground on. The refugee population at Chaffee swelled to more than 23,000. The Army was caught short on food supplies and cut the refugees' meals to two large spoonfuls of rice with a bit of chicken and a quarter of an apple. Still, morale was good, and it improved after the army announced it would increase the food rations.

The camps were settling into the ordinary routines of existence. There were a few deaths and also some marriages. On Guam, an ex-G.I. named Thomas Hejl finally found and married Nguyen Thi Ut, the fiancee he had met during his tour of duty in Viet Nam several years before. Their daughter, born three years ago, was killed by a Communist gunshot as her mother carried her on a fishing boat fleeing Saigon.

Apart from security clearances, the main problem was still finding enough American sponsors to help feed, clothe and house the refugees after they leave the camps. One fear is that after the initial publicity about the refugees dies down, so will the interest of potential sponsors. Said Joseph Battaglia, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference operation at Pendleton: "Unless there's a real surge of concern by the American people, we'll still be here this time next year. I think that in six months, there will be priests pleading with their parishes to remind them that refugees are languishing in the camps."

Finding Jobs. Volunteer workers also feared that the newcomers would be exploited as a source of cheap labor. Said a Pendleton volunteer: "In one batch of letters we received from potential sponsors, one-third -were from men asking for young girls to marry, one-third asked for women as domestics or as au pairs, and one-third asked for children." Still, there were many legitimate offers. West Foods, a mushroom-growing firm in Salem, Ore., said that it desperately needed Vietnamese pickers to replace 100 Mexicans, who had been deported as illegal aliens two weeks ago; company managers offered starting pay of $2.50 an hour, plus low-cost housing, and said that they could not find Americans willing to do the work. The state of Nebraska was seeking doctors for rural communities from among the 150 refugee physicians at Pendleton.

One refugee family--Nguyen Van Minh, his wife, daughter, son-in-law and one grandchild--was found by its sponsor almost by accident. Daughter Lang, supervisor of the Pan American World Airways ticket office in Saigon, got her family out on the last commercial flight leaving the city. Her father brought out $5,000 and some jewelry, but the family left $200,000 behind. They were sent to Eglin. As they waited there, the New Orleans States-Item published a photo of Lang's husband, a rock singer named Nguyen Son Tong. He was recognized by an old friend, Roger Piper, a Viet Nam veteran studying political science at the University of New Orleans. Piper and his wife Melody immediately set off for Eglin, arrived at midnight, quickly signed up to sponsor the family, and within hours drove back home with them. It was Tong's 28th birthday.

Of all the refugees, one of the most enterprising may be former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, who announced at Camp Pendleton that he would like to start a farming commune for Vietnamese. Ky said that people from California to North Carolina have sent him proposals for the settlement, which he envisions as a way station during the refugees' "difficult transition" to American society.

In Winter Park, Fla., Psychiatrist E. Michael Gutman organized a community drive that has so far been responsible for settling 45 refugees. Gutman, who served in Viet Nam in 1965-66, started by sponsoring Dr. Pham Huu Phuoc and Educator Nguyen Dinh Hoan. He arranged for them to arrive in style, greeted at Orlando's McCoy Air Force Base by a local high school band and a motorcade. The news stories of the arrival attracted so many other offers of sponsorship that Gutman installed a cousin at Eglin, enlisted volunteers to type and man the phones at his office, and started processing inquiries. His wife Donna set up a women's auxiliary to collect clothing, household goods and other items for the Vietnamese families.

Dr. Phuoc, a practicing neurosurgeon for 19 years, is far luckier than most of the refugees. He speaks English well and eventually will take exams to qualify for practice in the U.S. But the uprooting has been painful. "I am a newborn now," he said. "I just started my life the day I got here. The day I arrived here I had no house, no job, nothing. Everything must start again."

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