Editing Orderly Departure Program (section)

==Objectives and results==

As a result of the agreements at the Geneva conference, boat people leaving Vietnam declined to a few thousand per month and resettlements increased from 9,000 per month in early 1979 to 25,000 per month. The worst of the humanitarian crisis was over, although boat people would continue to leave Vietnam for more than another decade and die at sea or be confined to lengthy stays in refugee camps.<ref>Thompson, Larry Clinton ''Refugee Workers in the Indochina Exodus, 1975-1982'' Jefferson, NC: MacFarland Publishing Company, 2010, pp. 164-165; [http://www.unhcr.org/3ebf9bad0.html ''State of the World's Refugees, 2000''] United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, pp. 83,84; accessed 8 Jan 2014</ref>

The objectives of the Orderly Departure Program were "family reunion and other humanitarian cases." France saw the ODP as primarily a refugee program, i.e., to resettle political refugees; Canada, Australia, and New Zealand saw it as a family reunification program; and the U.S. wished to secure departure from Vietnam for former U.S. employees and relatives of Vietnamese in the U.S.<ref>Robinson, W. Courtland "Terms of Refuge" London: [[Zed Books]], Ltd. 1998, pp. 173-175</ref>     

Persons eligible for emigration out of Vietnam were determined by an exchange of lists between the government of Vietnam and the resettlement country. The Vietnamese list included persons the Vietnamese government had been approved for departure; the list of the resettlement country included those persons that country wished to accept. The first lists were exchanged by the U.S and Vietnam in late 1979. The US list consisted of 4,000 persons, mostly former employees of the U.S. and of Vietnamese with relatives in the United States. The Vietnamese list included 21,000 persons, the majority of them ethnic Chinese. There was very little overlap between the two lists, and it took nearly 18 months of negotiation managed by UNHCR to agree on 1,700 persons eligible for the ODP. Despite this slow start, however, the ODP slowly gained steam with the number of Vietnamese immigrants under ODP rising to several tens of thousands per year.<ref>Robinson, pp. 173-175</ref>     
  
The Orderly Departure Program office of the U.S. was initially established in [[Bangkok]], Thailand, in January 1980. On September 14, 1994, registration for the ODP was closed. In 1999, after normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, the office in Bangkok was closed, and the remaining open cases were transferred to the Refugee Resettlement Section at the U.S. Consulate in [[Ho Chi Minh City]], Vietnam. 

Although registration for the ODP ended in 1994, in 2005 the United States and Vietnam signed an agreement which allows those Vietnamese to register for immigration who were not able to do so before ODP registration ended.<ref>"Joint U.S. - Vietnamese Announcement of Humanitarian Resettlement Program" Department of State http://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/56936.htm, accessed 10 Feb 2014</ref>

The following table identifies those countries accepting the greatest number of Vietnamese immigrants under the Orderly Departure Program. A few thousand additional Vietnamese were resettled after 1997. More than 40 countries participated in the program. 
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Country !! Number of Vietnamese resettled under ODP program 1980-1997 !! Notes  
|-
| United States || 458,367 || 
|-
| Canada || 60,285 ||  
|- 
| Australia || 46,711 ||
|-
| France || 19,264 ||  
|-
| Germany || 12,067 || 
|-
| United Kingdom || 4,842 ||   
|-
| Norway || 3,998 || 
|-
| Belgium  || 3,106 || 
|-
| Sweden || 3,079 || 
|-
| Denmark || 2,298 ||
|-
| Other countries || 9,492 ||
|-
| Grand Total || 623,509 ||   
|}
Source: Robinson, W. Courtland ''Terms of Refuge'', London: Zed Books, Ltd.: 1998, Appendix 2