The Foreign Service Journal, June 2019

26 JUNE 2019 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The variety of words used today to describe migrants— “displaced,” “refugees,” “asylum-seekers” or “economic migrants” (who fail to meet the formal conditions for refugee sta- tus)—sows confusion. “Refugee” is perhaps the most common, if imprecise, term. During the 20th century, as the planet filled up, nations began formalizing this term, which originated in the late 17th century to describe those fleeing French religious persecu- tion to a place of safety. Many migrants became refugees. In the 1950s the international community began establishing laws and an international bureaucracy to provide humanitarian assis- tance and to monitor how refugees are treated. Today, millions of people are fleeing persecution, conflict and poverty brought on by poor governance, climate change and overpopulation. According to the United Nations High Com- missioner for Refugees, by the end of 2017 some 68.5 million forcibly displaced people were sheltered in 65 countries: this includes 24.5 million recognized as refugees, 3.2 million await- ing a decision on their application for asylum, and another 40 million who are “internally displaced”—in effect, refugees within their own countries. As of 2018, 1.2 million refugees were still in need of resettlement, 43 percent of them sheltered in Turkey; of the 56,000 who were resettled in 2018, 17,000 found permanent homes in the United States. But running away to a better life—whether it be for greater economic opportunity or for religious, cultural and political freedom—has become much more difficult in the 21st century. The United States, which has experienced both migration and immi- gration, is now challenged with the reality that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, seek to move here. Many do not care about legalities. Managing Refugee Flows During my 30-year Foreign Service career, I wit- nessed two major refugee flows, one from Indochina and the other from the Caribbean. In each case, the United States adopted different policies to manage people hoping to begin new lives in America. In the 12 years following the 1975 fall of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, more than three million people fled Indochina by land or by boat. Camps inThai- land, Malaysia and Indonesia funneled 1.3 million to the United States and almost as many elsewhere. Half a million opted either for repatriation or were forcibly sent back. The destruction of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia at the hands of the People’s Army of Vietnam (whose spearhead had a very thin plating of rebel Cambodians) sparked an enormous popular migration, as all levels of Khmer society sought to escape to Thailand and go farther abroad. In 1979, after forcing the first group of 40,000 Khmer back, the Thais ultimately accepted hundreds of thousands of Cambodian refugees under international care as part of a process to resettle the Khmer overseas. A negotiated peace process more than 10 years later permitted the repatriation of the remaining 360,000 Cambodians fromThai border camps. This international effort elicited dedicated national and United Nations civil servants, as well as hard work and imagi- native solutions from nongovernmental organizations in the United States and elsewhere. Fear of a major famine in post– Khmer Rouge Cambodia led to the creation of a “land bridge” at the Thai-Cambodian border, through which the international community poured grain and seed into western Cambodia, a traditional agricultural center of the country. All this continued while Cambodia’s political environment remained sclerosed. The Vietnamese, suspected of trying to cre- ate an Indochinese Federation under their aegis, were building a client regime, with Soviet assistance. Thailand and other South- east Asian states were supporting the remnant Khmer Rouge ATurkish baker gives a Syrian refugee child a round of bread in Istanbul in 2014. TIMOTHYCARNEY