Deportation of Vietnamese Nationals

Can anyone help me with this question?

"How does the government of Vietnam treat a Vietnamese national who

is deported to Vietnam from another country because that national

committed a crime in the other country? Is the Vietnamese national

incarcerated in Vietnam? Is he/she allowed to return to regular

life in Vietnam---job, housing, education, and other social benefits?"

Thanks,

Lien Huong Fiedler

Dear group,

Lien Huong Fiedler asks an important question of how Vietnam treats

individuals who are deported back to Vietnam for crimes committed in

other countries. I would like to hear others thoughts on this.

I was briefly involved in an an asylum case in the US for a Vietnamese

man in which these issues were key. The man stated that he had fear of

political prosecution in Vietnam for what he had done. I forget the

exact crime he committed -- I think it was burglary -- but it seemed

clear that he had committed the crime. Because he was not yet an

American citizen, he could be deported. I personally found the person's

claim that he should be eligible for asylum because of *political*

persecution to be dubious in the extreme. At the same time, I wondered

what would happen when he was sent back.

The US states that it will not deport an individual to another country

if he or she has a well-found fear of political persecution. But given

the staff levels of US Embassies, I simply doubt that much attention is

paid to tracking the whereabouts of individuals with a clear criminal

record who are deported to places like Vietnam.

One question, of course, is: what should constitute a criminal record?

The larger picture is that the United States imprisons over 2 million

individuals at any one time. Most Americans don't realize that the US

has the highest incarceration rate in the world -- not China, not

Russia, not anywhere else. (In contrast, France has under 60,000, I

believe). The US has an incarceration rate that is vastly higher than

Europe or Canada. It is a national disgrace. Some of the individuals who

get deported are arrested and convicted of petty crimes (such as

possession of marijuana) that in another country would not even get them

near a jail.

Shawn McHale