In 1993, Clinton gave Vietnam a $140 million International Monetary Fund loan. A year later, he lifted the trade embargo implemented during the war. And in 1995 Clinton announce “normalization of diplomatic relations” with Vietnam. Although Clinton began easing monetary flow between Vietnam and the rest of the world, the flow of migrants began to tighten. In the early 1990s, the United States and other countries began losing diplomatic patience with Vietnamese refugees, and one by one, began to refuse to accept them as refugees. Year after year at sea, Minh was denied entrance into other Southeast Asian countries, Australia and Japan.
Finally, on March 2, 1997, Minh and his four friends arrived in Anchorage, thinking they had a chance at freedom. Unfortunately, in 1997, the United States had closed its doors. By the end of the year, all refugee-processing centers across the world closed, leaving the men nowhere else to turn. Under Clinton in 1996, major changes in immigration law also came into effect, increasing the U.S. government’s ability to detain and deport immigrants. Under these still-active laws, there are disproportional and lifelong consequences to minor violations of law including misdemeanors committed long ago. The 1996 changes in immigration law also allowed for routine denials to a fair day in court, and blind application of the law without allowing judges to consider individual circumstances including a person’s U.S. family and their rehabilitation when considering detention or deportation. As a result of these policies, Minh was incarcerated in immigration custody upon arrival in the United States. Months later, he finally saw a judge. Despite three years at sea and fear of returning to his violent home, he was denied political asylum, issued a deportation order and held in a detention center in eastern Washington for one year.

Since the United States could not physically deport him – no repatriation agreement with Vietnam existed at the time – he was released under an “order of supervision.” Since 1997, he has had to report regularly to immigration authorities, unsure of his fate. Minh, who works in construction and has paid his taxes annually, will never realize his dream of becoming a U.S. citizen. He must return to a country he fled at 13. The fate of many Vietnamese like Minh is tied to a string of agreements between the United States and Vietnam, created in the shadow of the war. U.S. control over Vietnam’s human rights, immigration and economic freedom occurs at the detriment of constituents of both nations. The Vietnam Human Rights Act of 2001, renewed in 2004, makes monetary aid to Vietnam contingent upon its human rights improvements. Despite this, the United States has agreed to deport immigrants to Vietnam even as human rights violations there remain dismal. The United States approved Vietnam’s entrance into the World Trade Organization Jan. 1, the same month the Repatriation Agreement was finalized.
When he found out about the deportation agreement, Minh says he was “shocked.” Like most immigrants, he says, “We still worry about [deportation]. Ten years have already passed, and we don’t know what’s going on.”