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