Speech #980281517

Total departures for the United States and other resettlement countries have reached an average of 2.200 per month. and in fiscal year 1984 ODP departures to all countries will exceed the number of boat arrivals for the first time. Despite continuing problems. the UNHCR Orderly Departure Program is working and is increasingly becoming an alternative to hazardous boat escape from Vietnam. The reason the President is proposing the establishment of a separate Orderly Departure Program ceiling for fiscal 1985 is to ensure that a growing ODP is not perceived as reducing the number of refugees admitted to the United States from first asylum countries. As you know. there is a great deal of attention. particularly in that part of the world. about the large numbers of refugees. We estimate that this ceiling of 10.000 would permit the departure from Vietnam of some 18.000 refugees and immigrants in fiscal year 1985. some 7.000 of whom would enter the United States as refugees in fiscal year 1986 following completion of language training and cultural orientation at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Bataan. At UNHCRsponsored meetings in Geneva in October 1982 and October 1983. we urged the Vietnamese to permit an expansion of the Orderly Departure Program. We expect to meet. under UNHCR auspices. with the Vietnamese in Geneva again this October. and will present to them at that time our revised plans for the future expansion of the Orderly Departure Program.