March 17 marks the 46th anniversary of the Refugee Act of 1980, which has helped make it possible for more than 3 million refugees to find safety in the United States, including over 400,000 welcomed by USCRI. Behind every number is a story of resilience, courage, and hope for a better future.
As we reflect on this anniversary, we remember the Vietnamese refugees who fled their homeland and whose experiences helped make clear the need for a structured and compassionate response for those forced to flee.
50 Years After the Fall of Saigon: Refugee Stories From Vietnam
On April 30, 1975, Saigon fell. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees fled. Families were separated in the chaos. At least 800,000 took to the seas in search of safety. Many would spend weeks at sea, denied rescue by passing ships. This mounting humanitarian crisis turned the South China Sea into a necropolis, an unknown number of refugees the victims of drowning or even piracy. Some found refuge on land, only to spend years stuck in a refugee camp.
The story of the Vietnam War is not just the story of military battles, domestic protests, and Agent Orange. It is also this story, the story of people who had the courage to leave their homeland, to board rickety boats with meager rations in search of safety. Refugees’ memories are often written out of the record. But the story of war is incomplete without them: displacement is part of the violence of armed conflict. As we reckon with the legacy of the Vietnam War on the 50th anniversary of the fall of the Republic of South Vietnam, it is important to listen to refugee voices. For a first-hand account of the Fall of Saigon, USCRI’s Policy and Advocacy team spoke with Loc Nguyen, a refugee and advocate for the Vietnamese community.
THE WARS
Nguyen was born in 1944, on the cusp of the French-Indochina War.
The French colonized Vietnam at the end of the 19th century, exploiting the country for rubber, rice, and coal, while most of the local population lived in poverty. During the Second World War, they allowed Japanese forces to occupy Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, a leader of the Vietnamese independence movement, launched an insurgency against the French and the Japanese, aligning himself with the Allied forces. At the end of the Second World War, the French reimposed colonial rule in Vietnam, backed by the British and, eventually, the Americans. Betrayed by his former allies, Ho Chi Minh aligned himself with China and the USSR to lead the Viet Minh independence movement. After nearly ten years of war, Vietnam was partitioned along the 17th parallel, with the goal of reunifying the country in two years. The Minh government took the North; the South was ruled by Emperor Bao Dai, who was quickly succeeded by Ngo Din Diem, his prime minister.
Diem was unpopular, especially after nullifying the promised 1956 elections. A communist insurgency grew in South Vietnam. The United States, embroiled in the Cold War, subscribed to the domino theory and backed Diem in launching a counterattack. By 1965, American involvement in the war became all-encompassing, with President Lyndon B. Johnson deploying ground troops to the region. The war would go on to become a testament to our arrogance—and to the human cost of hubris. Amid the partition of Vietnam, Nguyen became a refugee for the first time at ten years old, his family fleeing the North of Vietnam for the South. As an adult, he trained as a war correspondent. He reported from the frontlines, following troops beyond the outposts. In a skirmish, he was nearly captured by the enemy. This experience would inspire him to write a song, the Saddened Refugee, which remains popular today.
THE FALL OF SAIGON
In 1973, American forces withdrew from the war. The South Vietnamese forces would continue to fight for another two years, until the spring of 1975.
In March of that year, cities in South Vietnam began to collapse. As northern forces closed in on Saigon, an evacuation began in earnest. Nguyen’s sister worked for the U.S. Government and had been promised that her family, except for Loc—who was in the military— would be evacuated in return for her service.
On April 21, the President of South Vietnam resigned. “The minute he resigned,” says Nguyen, “the country fell into chaos.”
Nguyen was offered a job at the airport, reading out the names of evacuees, which the Americans could not pronounce. In return, he would be allowed to evacuate alongside his family, who were due to arrive soon. For three days, he waited, eyes peeled for his family’s arrival. By the time the last bus arrived, his family was nowhere to be seen. He had no way to contact them. Bob, the American military officer supervising Nguyen, urged him to leave.
“I followed Bob’s instructions, and I got on the airplane with about 50 or 70 people. When the plane took off at about 3:00 in the morning on April 28th, I looked down and suddenly began to cry, calling out ‘farewell Saigon’.”
Nguyen’s plane landed in the Philippines before he was sent to a camp in Guam, where he mourned as Saigon fell.
“April 30th happened just like a funeral…a national funeral,” he recalled. “Everybody cried…some even committed suicide. I covered my ears, I cried by myself in my tent, and I thought of my family.”
Nguyen had escaped, but his family—like hundreds of thousands of other Vietnamese who dutifully served the United States—were left behind, abandoned by the country that promised to protect them.
AMERICA
Nguyen’s family eventually found their way to the United States, where he had created a home in Los Angeles. His mother and sister were brought over under the Orderly Departure Program, which created a legal avenue for Vietnamese to safely leave their homeland and create a new home in a sponsoring country. Nguyen, who by then had begun working in the refugee sector himself, was a driving force behind the legislation’s passage.
His brothers, like many Vietnamese, fled by boat. Passing ships ignored their cries for help, stopping only to photograph them. They were rescued only because a Kuwaiti ship nearly capsized them, punctuating the captain’s duty to rescue them.
The aftermath of the Vietnam War and the so-called “boat people” crisis made clear the need to develop a systematic and humanitarian approach to support those who fled. Many of the South Vietnamese who sought refuge in the United States, like Nguyen, supported the Americans during the war effort. Their persecution was ours to bear.
Between 1975 and 1979, approximately 300,000 Vietnamese refugees were admitted into the United States on parole. This ad hoc approach, Nguyen recalls, meant that refugees relied on the private support of churches and other voluntary organizations during their initial resettlement period in the United States. The type of assistance each refugee received varied widely, which created an unequal approach to welcome.
The Refugee Act of 1980 was born to respond to the need to develop a streamlined and humane approach to refugee admissions. It codified the definition of a refugee as someone with a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ and created a formal mechanism to bring refugees to the United States. USCRI has been an advocate for the legislation since its inception. In the 1980 issue of our publication, the World Refugee Survey, Senator Edward M. Kennedy reflected on the legislation’s importance:
The ‘boat people’ who have survived the ravages of the high seas in small boats, the attacks of pirates, and the deprivations of little food and water, only to arrive on unfriendly shores, to be pushed back to sea, and to an uncertain fate, cry out for a haven elsewhere. America can and must be such a haven, for unlike many countries we can still afford to be generous in our response.
– Senator Edward Kennedy
1980 World Refugee Survey
MEMORIAL
In the United States, there are hundreds of memorials dedicated to the veterans of the Vietnam War, but only one remembers the contributions of South Vietnamese soldiers, which Nguyen helped build. Located in Westminster, California, it features an American soldier and a South Vietnamese soldier, back-to-back in combat. It is a reminder to us all that the story of this country is the story of its immigrants.
Today, we no longer hear stories of Vietnamese fleeing on boats. But we do hear stories of Syrians, of Afghans, of Rohingya. There are more refugees in the world than ever before. The victims of war and persecution, they are exiled from their homeland, often forced to undertake perilous journeys in search of safety. Fifty years on from the fall of Saigon and its ensuing refugee crisis, it is time we learn from history and welcome those in need of safety.
