Philippine Refugee Processing Center | |
|---|---|
 The refugee camp in 1990 | |
| Country | Philippines |
| Province | Bataan |
| Municipality | Morong |
The Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) was a large facility near Morong, Bataan, Philippines, which was used as the final stop for Indochinese refugees making their way to permanent resettlement in other nations. It was situated south of Subic Bay and north of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant.
Opened in 1980, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC) prepared Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees, including ethnic minorities (such as the Chinese) from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, for immigration to a variety of resettlement nations such as Canada, Norway, Australia, France, and primarily the United States. An estimated 400,000 number of refugees were said to have settled in the area.
On February 21, 1981, Pope John Paul II visited the site and held a field mass which was attended by various refugees of different religion. During his visit, he sought for love and compassion for the Indochinese refugees and called for other nations to assist them in rebuilding their war-torn lives. A Vietnamese refugee crafted a wooden cross and gave it to the pope as tribute. In honor of the pope's visit, the Bataan Technology Park built the Replica of Papal Shrine near the actual grounds of where the mass was once held. It was inaugurated on May 2, 2011, the same day when Pope John Paul II was beatified in Rome. [1]
PRPC funding came to an end in the early 1990s as the wave of Indochinese refugees went from a flood to a trickle. The site was permanently closed and fell to looters and squatters, and eventually into disrepair by the early 1990s. By the mid-1990s, the Government of the Philippines decided to reclaim the site from the jungle, and turned it into the Bataan Technology Park, loosely associated with the new complex which had been built on the nearby site of the former Subic Bay Naval Base. A museum dedicated to the refugee camp and experience now stands on part of the former site as well. [2]
PRPC was funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and was capable of holding up to 18,000 refugees at any one time. Coupled with a large population of Filipino and employees from other developing countries, PRPC operated like a small city with schools, hospitals, libraries, restaurants, sports facilities, fire brigades, sewage treatment facilities, power generation facilities, water treatment centers, markets, and houses of worship for four religions.
The main functions of the camp were to hold the refugee population long enough to complete tuberculosis testing, wrap up bureaucratic requirements before departure, and—assuming the refugee was heading to an English speaking nation—give them an opportunity for English as a second language training. Virtually all refugees had confirmation before arrival at PRPC that they had been accepted to resettle in the West and therefore the mood among the refugee population was frequently upbeat and positive.
The ESL program was operated by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) and was funded by the U.S. Department of State. ICMC provided training to adult refugees aged 17 to 55. Aside from ESL classes, it offered Cultural Orientation (CO) and Work Orientation (WO). A similar ESL program was offered to children by World Relief through an extensive primary education program that took place within classrooms throughout the site.
Overseas Vietnamese refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the United States. The oldest wave of overseas Vietnamese left Vietnam as economic and political refugees after the 1975 fall of Saigon and the North Vietnamese annexation of South Vietnam.
The United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO) was a donor-nation funded relief effort for Cambodian refugees and others affected by years of warfare along the Thai-Cambodian border. It functioned from 1982 until 2001.
The Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA) is a program adopted in June 1989 at a conference in Geneva held by The Steering Committee of the International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees. It was designed to deter and to stop the continuing influx of Indochinese boat people and to cope with an increasing reluctance by third countries to maintain resettlement opportunities for every Vietnamese or Laotian exile, with the threat of countries of first asylum in Southeast Asia to push back asylum seekers.
Galang Refugee Camp accommodated Indochinese refugees from 1979 to 1996 on Galang Island in the Riau Islands of Indonesia. It is estimated that around 250,000 refugees passed through Galang during this period.
The situation of human rights in Laos has often been, and remains, a recognized cause for serious concern. Laos is one of a handful of Marxist-Leninist governments and is ruled by a one-party communist government backed by the Lao People's Army in alliance with the Vietnam People's Army and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi.
The American Homecoming Act or Amerasian Homecoming Act, was an Act of Congress giving preferential immigration status to children in Vietnam born of U.S. fathers. The American Homecoming Act was written in 1987, passed in 1988, and implemented in 1989. The act increased Vietnamese Amerasian immigration to the U.S. because it allowed applicants to establish a mixed race identity by appearance alone. Additionally, the American Homecoming Act allowed the Amerasian children and their immediate relatives to receive refugee benefits. About 23,000 Amerasians and 67,000 of their relatives entered the United States under this act. While the American Homecoming Act was the most successful program in moving Vietnamese Amerasian children to the United States, the act was not the first attempt by the U.S. government. Additionally the act experienced flaws and controversies over the refugees it did and did not include since the act only allowed Vietnamese Amerasian children, as opposed to other South East Asian nations in which the United States also had forces in the war.
Carl L. Bankston III is an American sociologist, author and educator. He is best known for his work on immigration to the United States, particularly on the adaptation of Vietnamese American immigrants, and for his work on ethnicity, social capital, sociology of religion and the sociology of education.
The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) is an international organization that serves and protects uprooted people, including migrants, refugees, and internally displaced people, regardless of faith, race, ethnicity or nationality. With staff and programs in over 40 countries, ICMC advocates for sustainable solutions and rights-based policies directly and through a worldwide network of 132 member organizations.
The Scout movement in the Philippines is served by
Operation New Life was the care and processing on Guam of Vietnamese refugees evacuated before and after the Fall of Saigon, the closing day of the Vietnam War. More than 111,000 of the evacuated 130,000 Vietnamese refugees were transported to Guam, where they were housed in tent cities for a few weeks while being processed for resettlement. The great majority of the refugees were resettled in the United States. A few thousand were resettled in other countries or chose to return to Vietnam on the vessel Thuong Tin.
The Khao-I-Dang (KID) Holding Center was a Cambodian refugee camp 20 km north of Aranyaprathet in Prachinburi. The longest-lived refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border, it was established in late 1979, administered by the Thai Interior Ministry and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), unlike other camps on the border, which were administered by a coalition made up of UNICEF, the World Food Program, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (briefly), and after 1982, the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO). The camp held refugees fleeing the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
Laotian Australians, also known as Lao Australians, refers to Australians who have either migrated from Laos and/or have Lao ancestry. The first Lao people that came to live in Australia arrived through the Colombo Plan in the 1960s, which gave a number of Laotians the opportunity to live and study in Australia. The migration of the Lao commenced with the Indochinese refugee crisis in 1975 following communist regime takeovers. According to the 2016 Census, there are 10,402 Laos-born Australians with the majority residing in New South Wales.
Relations between Laos and the United States officially began when the United States opened a legation in Laos in 1950, when Laos was a semi-autonomous state within French Indochina. These relations were maintained after Lao independence in October 1953.
The Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, passed on May 23, 1975, under President Gerald Ford, was a response to the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War. Under this act, approximately 130,000 refugees from South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were allowed to enter the United States under a special status, and the act allotted for special relocation aid and financial assistance.
Site Two Refugee Camp was the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border and, for several years, the largest refugee camp in Southeast Asia. The camp was established in January 1985 during the 1984-1985 Vietnamese dry-season offensive against guerrilla forces opposing Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia.
Communism in Vietnam is linked to the Politics of Vietnam and the push for independence. Marxism was introduced in Vietnam with the emergence of three communist parties: the Indochinese Communist Party, the Annamese Communist Party, and the Indochinese Communist Union, later joined by a Trotskyist movement led by Tạ Thu Thâu. In 1930, the Communist International (Comintern) sent Nguyễn Ái Quốc to Hong Kong to coordinate the unification of the parties into the Vietnamese Communist Party, with Trần Phú as its first Secretary General.
Nong Samet Refugee Camp, in Nong Samet Village, Khok Sung District, Sa Kaeo Province, Thailand, was a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border and served as a power base for the Khmer People's National Liberation Front (KPNLF) until its destruction by the Vietnamese military in late 1984.
Vietnamese boat people were refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. This migration and humanitarian crisis was at its highest in 1978 and 1979, but continued into the early 1990s. The term is also often used generically to refer to the Vietnamese people who left their country in a mass exodus between 1975 and 1995. This article uses the term "boat people" to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by sea.
The Indochina refugee crisis was the large outflow of people from the former French colonies of Indochina, comprising the countries of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, after communist governments were established in 1975. Over the next 25 years and out of a total Indochinese population in 1975 of 56 million, more than 3 million people would undertake the dangerous journey to become refugees in other countries of Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, or China. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 250,000 Vietnamese refugees had perished at sea by July 1986. More than 2.5 million Indochinese were resettled, mostly in North America, Australia, and Europe. More than 525,000 were repatriated, either voluntarily or involuntarily, mainly from Cambodia.
Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, officially the Ban Vinai Holding Center, was a refugee camp in Thailand from 1975 until 1992. Ban Vinai primarily housed highland people, especially Hmong, who fled communist rule in Laos. Ban Vinai had a maximum population of about 45,000 Hmong and other highland people. Many of the highland Lao were resettled in the United States and other countries. Many others lived in the camp for years which came to resemble a crowded and large Hmong village. The Royal Thai Government closed the camp in 1992, forced some of the inhabitants to return to Laos and removed the rest of them to other refugee camps.
Coordinates: 14°42′45.16″N120°17′25.92″E / 14.7125444°N 120.2905333°E