page_title: Asylum in Australia
section_title: Vietnamese boat people: 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Asylum in Australia / Timeline / Vietnamese boat people: 1970s
caption_attribution_description: English: Tan Le
context_page_description: Asylum in Australia has been granted to many refugees since 1945, when half a million Europeans displaced by World War II were given asylum. Since then, there have been periodic waves of asylum seekers from South East Asia and the Middle East, with government policy and public opinion changing over the years.
  Refugees are governed by statutes and Government policies which seek to implement Australia's obligations under the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Australia is a party. Thousands of refugees have sought asylum in Australia over the past decade, with the main forces driving movement being war, civil unrest and persecution. The annual refugee quota in 2012 was 20,000 people. From 1945 to the early 1990s, more than half a million refugees and other displaced persons were accepted into Australia.
  Historically, most asylum seekers arrived by plane. However, there was an increasing number of asylum seekers arriving by boat in the late 2000s and early 2010s, which was met with some public disapproval. In 2011–2012, asylum seekers arriving by boat outnumbered those arriving by plane for the first time.
context_section_description: The first recorded instance of asylum seekers arriving in Australia via unauthorised boat occurred in April 1976. Fleeing South Vietnam after the Communist Party victory of 1975, an estimated 2,000 "Vietnamese boat people" followed from 1976–1982. The sporadic arrival of unauthorised boats was a cause of concern for the Australian people. The initial controversy regarding asylum seekers in Australia was mostly because of family reunions. Employment and security concerns were also raised with the Waterside Workers Federation calling for strikes on the matter. This led to the first detention of boat people. In response, the government of Malcolm Fraser authorised the immigration of more than 50,000 Vietnamese from Indian Ocean refugee camps. At the time, the "open door" immigration policy enjoyed bipartisan support.
  Professor Crock says that a type of offshore processing was used after the Vietnam War. The regional processing regime established right across Southeast Asia was designed to stop asylum seekers where they were, process them in situ, and then to distribute them in an orderly way.
caption: Tan Le entered Australia as a refugee in 1982 and was named Young Australian of the Year in 1998.
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