Finally Here!

For 16 years 229 Phillipine refugees had been waiting to come to the United States. This came with a United States agreement with Manila to resettle refugees that had been living there since the 1980s. Within the next six months an extimated 2,000 Vietnamese are expected to arrive in the United States. These refugees are from when the communists had overtaken Vietnam in 1975. They had escaped the country in small fishing boats and had landed in neighboring countries where they became refugees. The refugees who had arrived in the Phillipines were discussed between the United States and the Phillipines since they arrived.

A historical parallel to the Vietnamese refugees is the flight of the Pilgrims from Europe. They left England as refugees. The only religion accepted in England was the Church of England. Anybody who opposed the church could be arrested and thrown into prison. The Pilgrims were separatists. They common belief of Puritans was that the Church of England needed to be purifed. The pilgrims were extremists who believed that the church of England could not be purified so they wanted to separate. With these radical beliefs, they pilgrims were forced to leave England or face persecution.