The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975 with the fall of Saigon to the People's Army of Vietnam and the subsequent evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the former government of South Vietnam.
Most of the evacuees were resettled in the United States in Operation New Life and Operation New Arrivals. The U.S government transported refugees from Vietnam via aircraft and ships to temporarily settle down in Guam before moving them to designated homes in the contiguous United States. Within the same year, communist forces gained control of Cambodia and Laos, thus engendering a steady flow of refugees fleeing all three countries.
In 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, budgeting roughly 415 million dollars in the effort of providing transportation, healthcare, and accommodations to the 130,000 Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laos refugees.
After the Saigon evacuation, the numbers of Vietnamese leaving their country remained relatively small until mid-1978. A number of factors contributed to the refugee crisis, including economic hardship and wars among Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. In addition, up to 300,000 people, especially those associated with the former government and military of South Vietnam, were sent to re-education camps, where many endured torture, starvation, and disease while being forced to perform hard labor.
In addition, 1 million people, mostly city dwellers, "volunteered" to live in "New Economic Zones" where they were to survive by reclaiming land and clearing jungle to grow crops.
Repression was especially severe on the Hoa people, the ethnic Chinese population in Vietnam.
Due to increasing tensions between Vietnam and China, which ultimately resulted in China's 1979 invasion of Vietnam, the Hoa were seen by the Vietnamese government as a security threat. Hoa people also controlled much of the retail trade in South Vietnam, and the communist government increasingly levied them with taxes, placed restrictions on trade, and confiscated businesses. In May 1978, the Hoa began to leave Vietnam in large numbers for China, initially by land. By the end of 1979, resulting from the Sino-Vietnamese War, 250,000 Hoa had sought refuge in China and many tens of thousands more were among the Vietnamese boat people scattered all over Southeast Asia and in Hong Kong.
The Vietnamese government and its officials profited from the outflow of refugees, especially the often well-to-do Hoa. The price for obtaining exit permits, documentation, and a boat or ship, often derelict, to leave Vietnam was reported to be the equivalent of $3,000 for adults and half that for children. These payments were often made in the form of gold bars. Many poorer Vietnamese left their country secretly without documentation and in flimsy boats, and these were the most vulnerable to pirates and storms while at sea.
There were many methods employed by Vietnamese citizens to leave the country. Most were secret and done at night; some involved the bribing of top government officials. Some people bought places in large boats that held up to several hundred passengers. Others boarded fishing boats (fishing being a common occupation in Vietnam) and left that way. One method used involved middle-class refugees from Saigon, armed with forged identity documents, traveling approximately 1,100 kilometres (680 mi) to Danang by road. On arrival, they would take refuge for up to two days in safe houses while waiting for fishing junks and trawlers to take small groups into international waters.[citation needed] Planning for such a trip took many months and even years. Although these attempts often caused a depletion of resources, people often had false starts before they managed to escape.[