Mr. President. the Senator from Kansas rises to propose a sense of the Congress amendment to the Department of Justice authorization bill. This amendment expresses the sense of the Congress that our Government should attempt to do all it can. consistent with our foreign policy interests. to insure that the international refugee resettlement now taking place in Indochina treats Cambodian refugees fairly and in the same manner as all other refugees in that area. Since the fall of Laos. Cambodia. and Vietnam in 1975. more than 1 million Indochinese have fled the new Communist regimes in those nations to seek refuge in neighboring countries. This staggering exodus was a dramatic challenge to the international community. Under the auspices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. a resettlement effort was established. About 300.000 Indochinese have been admitted to the United States and about 170.000 have been resettled in other nonCommunist nations through this effort. Over 250.000 Vietnamese of Chinese ethnic origin have found asylum in China. Mr. President. in spite of the large number of refugees still awaiting resettlement. the Senator from Kansas must applaud this international effort. Only if each nation shoulders its share of this burden can we ever hope to deal humanely with the needs of refugees. In late 1978 and early 1979. the flow of refugees rapidly increased. We are all familiar with the plight of the "boat people" fleeing from Vietnam during that period. At that same time. as a result of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. thousands of Cambodians fled from their homeland. These refugees have not captured American public sentiment to the same extent as the Vietnamese "boat people." but their plight was. and is. every bit as dire as that of the "boat people." The Senator from Kansas has been concerned about the lot of Cambodian refugees for some time. In the last Congress. the Senate accepted a Dole amendment to the Departments of State and Justice appropriations bill which expressed the sense of the Senate that the Attorney General should exercise his authority to parole 15.000 Cambodian refugees into the United States over 2 years. Since that time. the Congress has passed the Refugee Act which established a flexible structure for accepting refugees into the United States. One purpose of that legislation was to avoid the need for ad hoc responses to individual refugee needs. Thus. the use of the parole authority to admit large groups of refugees would now be inappropriate and against the spirit. if not the letter. of the Refugee Act. Yet the concerned asylum nations are now confronted by a new difficulty. To date. over 150.000 Khmer refugees have crossed into Thailand where they are now in "holding centers" under the care of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. These Khmer are kept in "holding centers." rather than "refugee camps" because they are not considered to be "refugees" by the U.N. High Commissioner and the Thai Government. Consequently. representatives of the nations participating in the international resettlement effort are not allowed to enter these centers to process the people there for resettlement. In the view of the U.N. High Commissioner. and presumably the Thai Government. which controls these centers. the Khmer refugees do not qualify for resettlement as international refugees because they are expected to return home once conditions permit. This. of course. not only assumes that these people fled Cambodia due solely to the Vietnamese invasion and occupation. but that the Vietnamese occupation will be shortlived. Most importantly. this situation suggests a confused application of the U.N. convention on refugees. That convention considers a refugee to be a person outside of the country of his nationality who. due to a fear of persecution. is unable or unwilling to return to that country. How can anyone uniformly characterize the condition or desires of a group of 150.000 Khmer so as to deprive them of the benefits of this international agreement? Some of this group undoubtedly prefer to remain where they are and not to seek resettlement in the hopes of returning to Cambodia.
Identified stereotypes
The paragraph suggests that all Khmer refugees are not considered refugees because they are expected to return home, thus generalizing their desires and circumstances.