Volume 26, Number 13 · August 16, 1979
How It Works
By Jean-Francis Held
Already more than 300,000 Vietnamese have left, whether clandestinely or not. The reservoir seems inexhaustible. A strange and casuistic official policy is at work, heartbreaking and confusing. The dossiers of the legitimate cases of separated families—the wife in Vietnam, the husband in Paris—remain in suspension in Hanoi, while Vietnam tears off parts of itself and expels them. There is no possible doubt that the exodus is arranged, organized. In fact the export of human beings considered 'socially irredeemable' brought, in 1978, some 115 million dollars to the Vietnamese treasury, a treasury being drained by an expansionism that seemed more mystical than rational. This was about two and a half percent of the gross national product.
Feature, 399 words
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