Blunders, Breakdowns--and Action

"I don't know how I got here," said the elderly Vietnamese with the straggly Ho Chi Minn beard. "When my wife and I were evacuated from the Central Highlands, we thought we were going to Saigon. Instead, we ended up in America. It seems like a nice place, but what would an old man like me do here?"

The old man was standing on the hot tarmac of the El Toro Marine Air Station at Santa Ana, Calif., along with 49 other Vietnamese--all waiting to board the C-141 Starlifter that would take them to Guam, the first leg of their journey back home. They were among the 2,500 refugees who have petitioned to be flown back to Viet Nam by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (1,200 have already left). Most of them, especially the single men, are returning because they want to be reunited with their families. But increasingly, those who seek repatriation reflect an unfortunate fact about the American refugee resettlement program: it has been so excruciatingly slow and inefficient that it has left some refugees, if not eager to return to Viet Nam, at least demoralized about their prospects in the U.S.

Finding Helpers. Authorities have steadily pushed back their target date for resettling all the refugees. First it was July 1, then Aug. 1--and now Nov. 1. Skeptics doubt that the program can be completed before next spring. About 48,000 refugees--more than one-third of the total--have been "out-processed" to homes. Meanwhile, 62,000 still languish in four refugee camps in the U.S., and 18,000 have not yet left way stations on Guam and Wake Island.

The most acute difficulty is finding reliable sponsors. This is the job of nine voluntary agencies (four religious and five secular), which have offices at each of the camps. Lately they have tried to find group sponsorship within communities and churches. For example, the Lutheran voluntary agency asked 110 of its congregations in California to take on at least one Vietnamese family; so far, 90 have agreed to do so. Elsewhere, the drives have not gone as well. Says Richard D. Stahlke, head of the Lutheran refugee program in Arizona: "We've all been hearing the same objections from potential sponsors--the economic situation and the fear of overtaxing congregations."

Another obstacle: many aspiring individual sponsors are regarded by the voluntary agencies as unqualified to take responsibility for a refugee family. The Interagency Task Force for Indochina Refugees in Washington has been screening 22,000 inquiries received through its toll-free phone lines. "I'd be very pleased if 5,000 sponsors resulted from those inquiries," says Joseph Battaglia, head of the U.S. Catholic Conference office at California's Camp Pendleton. Explains Stahlke: "We're getting a lot of screwballs who are more interested in their own purposes than in the refugees. Some seek cheap labor; others want companionship." A Californian, 44, wrote in for a wife with these specifications: "Godfearing, no dirty background, knows how to speak English, height 5 ft. 3, age 21-25."

Earlier, some sponsors were accepted with the most cursory of investigations, often after nothing more than a telephone interview. The result: a number of "breakdowns," in which sponsors have not fulfilled their commitment to provide for the refugees until they can fend for themselves. There have been a few sordid instances of outright exploitation or abuse--in Florida, one woman was assaulted by her male sponsor. In most breakdowns, however, the sponsors simply lack resources to support the refugees.

Menial Jobs. Some of the refugees have become so lonely for Vietnamese company that they have sought to return to the camps. Others, especially those who enjoyed upper-class status in Viet Nam, have been unwilling to take menial jobs. A senior official of a volunteer agency reports that several refugees refused a position as night clerk in a hotel in Buffalo, partly because of the job's nature and partly because of the city's frigid winters. Says the official: "Not all of these people realize that, like other refugee groups in our history, they must start at the bottom, then move around later."

Yet it would be premature to judge the resettlement program a failure. The director of the Interagency Task Force, Julia Vadala Taft, concedes that the program has been beset by problems but is still "pleased at the progress that has been made so far." The vast majority of placements have been successful, she argues, while the small number of "sponsor-refugee mismatches" is no more than should be expected in a program "of this size and complexity."

At Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, by far the smallest of the camps with only 5,000 refugees, there has been only a 2% breakdown rate, and officials predict that out-processing will be virtually completed by Oct. 1. This is in part because of Eglin's small size but also because it has had very good relations with nearby communities. Surprisingly, the camp's many semiliterate fishermen have been among the fastest to find jobs. Says James Chandler, a State Department liaison officer at Eglin: "I thought the fishermen would be the hardest group to place, but there is a demand for them all the way from Florida to Texas." Last week 25 fishermen and their families flew to Port Isabel, Texas, where Isbell Seafood, Inc. will put them on its 21 shrimp boats.

Leaders of the resettlement program are confident that eventually sponsors will be found for all the Vietnamese and that they will adjust as well as the Cubans, the Hungarians and other earlier refugee waves. Donald MacDonald, a State Department officer at Fort Chaffee, Ark., claims that there is a waiting list of potential sponsors but that the staffs of the volunteer agencies are too small to handle all the work. Says he: "If we could double those staffs, we could double the number of placements."

Fast action is needed. At the refugee center in Indiantown Gap, Pa., all the refugees must be moved out by early fall: the camp is not winterized. Though the other camps are located in warm climates, further delay can only demoralize the homeless Vietnamese. As TIME Correspondent Marcia Gauger reports from Indiantown Gap: "So far, despite the delays, the overcrowded conditions and the lack of privacy, most of the refugees remain unfailingly optimistic, if uncertain, about the future. They have a great dignity that must help them to endure the degrading circumstances of living in camps on handouts. For a people as proud and resourceful as they have proved to be, this must be a frustration that, if it continues, could become insupportable."

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