In their first annual meeting, Vietnam’s bishops addressed the issue of internal and external migration. Mgr Nguyen Thai Hop said that migrants should be welcomed and their integration promoted. From slave labour to the victims of the sex racket, many problems have to be solved. The challenge involves the Church and the highest offices of state.

Hanoi (AsiaNews/EDA) – Internal and external migration are increasingly important in Vietnam. In view of this, the bishops addressed the issue at a round table in their first annual meeting held in mid-April in Saigon.

Vietnam’s Catholic Church is looking for "answers" to the increasing challenges. However, through the president of the Justice and Peace Commission, Catholic leaders noted that "the highest offices of the State" must be involved as well; in particular, "the bodies responsible for the defence of travellers" and those fighting against human trafficking.

Although it is "a recent phenomenon," migration affects thousands of people, men and women, often victims of violence and abuse.

At the assembly, Mgr Joseph Nguyen Chi Linh, head of the Episcopal Commission on Migrants, illustrated the problem created by internally displaced people and those who go to foreign countries looking for work.

Migration in Vietnam, said the prelate, is a fairly recent phenomenon. The first wave goes back to 1954 with the flight to the south of a million Vietnamese in the aftermath of the Geneva agreements that divided the country into two.

Large-scale migration occurred again in April 1975, with the end of the war and the takeover of the South by the North. Depending on the sources, anywhere between one to five million boat people and illegal migrants left on makeshift boats.

More recently, we have had internal migration – from the countryside to the big cities – and migration abroad, first to the former Soviet bloc, now to Malaysia, Taiwan, and Gulf countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia – for economic reasons.

In an interview with Radio Free Asia, the Bishop of Vinh Mgr Paul Nguyen Thai Hop, president of the Commission of Justice and Peace of the Vietnamese Church, carefully analysed the issue of migration and listed the most critical situations.

"There are two different types of migration: internal and external,” the prelate said. To meet this challenge, the "pastoral ministry of migrants" was born.

“It is our duty,” Mgr Nguyen said. Host communities have a duty to "welcome migrants" and promote "the right conditions for their integration."

"No one should be seen as just a ‘migrant’,” the bishop added. “We should instead view them through fraternal eyes. From a certain point of view, all of our country’s development policies have benefited from the contribution of migrants".

The Church's pastoral ministry gives "great attention to migrants," said the head of Justice and Peace, and "considers this task as a duty." Indeed, as some suggest, even Jesus "was a migrant”.

The bishop himself saw first-hand the "tragedy experienced by migrants", particularly those who go abroad in search of a job. Many are exchanged, forced into slave-like conditions. Women are exploited for sex or given as brides to men without scruples. "The situation of those going abroad is tragic,” he noted.

These people include women from the Mekong Delta, who emigrate to get married and end up into real servitude to their husband’s family. For some, the situation is so desperate that they are driven to commit suicide. There are also migrant victims of human trafficking. 

"The Commission for the pastoral care of migrants will cooperate with other commission to find answers to the most topical issues. [Problems concerning] the highest offices in the country,” said the prelate, “especially the bodies designed to protect the interests of [migrant] workers."

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