Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act - Enactment and Provisions

Enactment and Provisions

The Indochina Migration and Refugee Act was signed on May 23, 1975, and allocated funding for the evacuation and resettlement of Vietnamese refugees in the United States. Because of this act, the 65,000 Vietnamese who had been evacuated by the U.S. military and an additional 65,000 who had made their way to the U.S. on their own gained parole into the United States.

To process the refugees, four temporary immigration centers were set up at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida; Camp Pendleton, California; Fort Chaffee, Arkansas; and Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania. Each refugee underwent a security check and could be denied admittance if he or she “violated a social norm, had a criminal record, or had offenses that were political in nature.” A team effort of dozens of immigration agencies aided in the resettlement process of those who made it past the screening, including the United States Catholic Conference, Church World Service, International Rescue Committee, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, the Tolstoy Foundation, the American Council for Nationalities Service, the American Fund for Czechoslovak Refugees, the Travelers Aid International Social Service of America, as well as several state and city service centers. In 1975, almost 130,000 refugees were paroled through this system, which finished its initial operations at Fort Chaffee in December of that same year. While the first year of the Act had come to a close, it opened the doors for years of mass refugee acceptance.