Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975–1980 by Michael J. Molloy et al. (review)

In November 2013, a group of scholars and members of the Canadian Immigration Historical Society met at York University in Toronto for a conference titled, "The Indochinese Refugee Movement 1975–1980 and the Launch of Canada's Private Refugee Sponsorship Program." As the birth of the Canadian sponsorship program was discussed, many in the room wondered out loud why a similar response was not being generated for the escalating crisis in Syria. Within two years, a photograph of a drowned boy woke up the world to the unfolding tragedy, refugees became an election issue in Canada, and the new federal government came in with a promise to bring in 25,000 Syrians within a year. As the practicalities of this promise came to light, the questions shifted to wondering how, in 1979–1980, the government managed to bring over 60,000 Indochinese refugees. In Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975–1980, Mike Molloy, Peter Duschinsky, Kurt F. Jensen, and Robert Shalka answer this question in a way that only former civil servants grounded in their field experience could — in immense detail.

Spanning over 600 pages, the book divides into three sections: first, a historical review of Canada's involvement in the Indochinese refugee crisis; second, the Canadian resettlement operations in Southeast Asia; and third, the reception of refugees in Canada. The historical tracing of this narrative comes from the memory of many of those involved in the program and a deep reach into the government records preserved at Library and Archives Canada. Scholars keen on studying the Indochinese resettlement will find this book an invaluable resource and an analytical launch-pad of information that was previously only available piecemeal if one knew where to look or had the benefit of sitting down with Molloy and others over coffee. Those currently working as immigration officers, or on Canada's immigration policies and laws, will be drawn to the inside understanding of policy development and likely be envious of the freedom of their predecessors, particularly given the somewhat mythologized and celebratory telling. Still others, with a longstanding or newly-found involvement in private sponsorship or refugee assistance will enjoy the program's origin story. For all readers there are moments of reward.

As someone who has long been digging for details and already knew many of the big facts, the highlights include the legacy of the Promise of Visa Letter; the personalized telling of the first Canadian baby flight in 1975; the swift and subtle move in the language of commitment from "fifty people" to "fifty families" in 1978; the discretionary freedom that permitted creativity in the foreign service resulting from "no cell phones, portable computers, or email"; the identification of groups of friends to resettle together as a means of successfully sponsoring single refugees; and the retrieval of a lost diamond from the seams of a bra dug out from a dumpster with the underlying recognition that not everything the refugees wore into Canada should be discarded.

Nor is the book just the story of Indochinese resettlement. It is the story of Canada's immigration program as it moved from overt racism to global humanitarianism; as it shifted from bringing over family members to bringing in strangers; as it evolved from "multi-page carbon-paper forms" (124) to "computerization" (130); and as it grew from ad hoc responses to newcomers to a legal framework. Parallels with the Syrian resettlement struck me throughout in the shift from political promises to actual implementation and immense public uptake. As an example, the Indochinese Refugee Newsletter sent by surface mail serves as a predecessor to #WelcomeRefugees as both efforts strove to make information "rapidly available to interested Canadians" (135).

The book is not, however, without its challenges. The primacy of the intent to document the historical record...