Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows Linda Phillips, an Australian law student who has decided to become a volunteer lawyer in the Philippines. The clip opens with the sounds of lively dance music and a friendly greeting to Linda from lawyer Hoi Trinh. As Linda is shown leaving the airport to go to the office in Manila where she will be working, she explains in voice-over that she has come to work with Hoi Trinh to assist stateless Vietnamese refugees who are living in the Philippines. A shot showing Linda meeting her fellow workers is followed by a close-up of her explaining that there are ‘better things in life than just working for a corporation’.

Educational value points

• Linda Phillips, featured in this clip, volunteered her time to give professional help to refugees out of a humanitarian concern for their plight. As an Australian law student she contacted Hoi Trinh, who had advertised internationally for volunteers who could offer legal assistance. She accepted the $100 a month he was able to offer and joined him and Quan Nguyen in their Manila office. In 2007 she was employed as a Legal Officer for the Jesuit Refugee Service in Thailand.

• The clip depicts the office where Hoi Trinh, Quan Nguyen and Linda Phillips were to work together, which was established and funded by the Vietnamese Community in Australia (VCA) in 1997 to help reunite Vietnamese families. The office has provided free legal advice, handles visa matters and attempts to resettle the Vietnamese people who have been living as stateless citizens in the Philippines since 1989.

• Hoi Trinh (1970–) is a Vietnamese–Australian who has worked tirelessly since 1998 for the resettlement of Vietnamese boat people living in the Philippines and Hong Kong. Born in Saigon, he left Vietnam at the age of 15 and came to Australia as a refugee. At 19 he started a law degree and graduated with a combined Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws.

• Hoi Trinh has worked to assist the more than 1,500 Vietnamese boat people who were left stateless in the Philippines after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) withdrew from South-East Asia in 1996. After the North Vietnamese communists won the Vietnam War and until 1989, political asylum was granted automatically to those Vietnamese refugees who applied for it in nearby countries, including Australia. Those refugees arriving after 1989 have had to go through a UNHCR screening process.

• The clip mentions the predicament of the stateless Vietnamese who fled Vietnam at the end of the War but, with no identification documents, have no rights of citizenship in the Philippines. In 2007 they were denied Vietnamese nationality unless they returned to Vietnam. In the Philippines they are not eligible for work permits or travel documents, cannot own property and remain without civil or legal protection.

• In 1999 the Vietnamese Community in Australia (VCA) first proposed the resettlement of stateless Vietnamese boat people with sponsoring relatives in Australia to Philip Ruddock, then the Australian immigration minister, on humanitarian grounds. In 2000 the profiles of 171 such families were submitted to the minister for consideration. By 2002, 28 stateless families had been resettled with families in Australia. At the time of writing more than 100 families were still in the Philippines.

• Vietnamese–Australians such as Hoi Trinh now number approximately 150,000 and make up one of the five largest communities of non-English-speaking background in Australia. Although the Vietnamese are one of the poorest migrant groups in Australia with a relatively high rate of unemployment, they have a much higher percentage of tertiary qualifications per head of population than the general community.

• The writer–director of In Limbo, from which this clip is taken, Dai Le, represents one of the many success stories of Vietnamese migration to Australia. Originally a Vietnamese refugee, she has written and directed three documentaries, Taking Charge of Cabramatta (1998), In Limbo (2001) and Operation Babylift (2005). Each of these films focuses on the Vietnamese community in Australia. In Limbo was a finalist at the 2003 ATOM Awards.

This clip starts approximately 12 minutes into the documentary.

Linda Phillips, a volunteer law student from Australia, is met by Hoi Trinh, an Australian-Vietnamese lawyer at Manila Airport. They walk out of the airport into the night outside the airport. They get out of the car and are on a busy street, they walk up a staircase and enter a small office where there is Quan Nguyen, a volunteer from the USA, and another man. They walk out of the office. There is happy holiday music playing throughout the clip.

Hoi Trinh Hey, hey! How are you?

Linda Phillips Hello. How you going?

Hoi Trinh Not bad. How are you?

Linda Phillips Good.

Hoi Trinh Good. Welcome to Manila.

Linda Phillips Thank you.

Hoi Trinh We got a car!

Linda Phillips Wow!

Hoi Trinh Yeah, yeah. We want to make it extra special.

Linda Phillips You know, I thought the Vietnamese boat people thing had finished and it was over and everyone was resettled and everyone was happy.

Hoi Trinh This is where we live, right in front of a garbage tip.

Linda Philips And the VD clinic.

Hoi Trinh Just please walk up.

Linda Phillips OK. I heard Hoi Trinh on the radio talking about the issue. I was surprised that there was still this group of people stuck.

Hoi Trinh That’s an Internet place. You can use the Internet.

Linda Phillips Uh-huh. Handy. And also because I had started doing a law degree. I wanted to know how you could make a law degree relevant.

Music stops.

Hoi Trinh Hello. This is Linda. This is Quan.

Quan Nguyen Hello.

Linda Phillips Nice meeting you.

Hoi Trinh Linda, this is the office.

Linda Phillips It’s beautiful.

Hoi Trinh Yeah. Isn’t it.

Linda Phillips It’s stunning.

Hoi Trinh Yeah. So Quan is the, um, gentleman I told you about, the volunteer from DC, and Kwan has been here for a year.

Linda Phillips Right, so you know everything.

Quan Nguyen Oh, yeah.

Linda Phillips Good. It’s hot!

Linda Phillips is interviewed.

Linda Phillips It seemed to be something worthwhile that, you know, there’s better things in life than – than just working for a corporation.

A daylight street scene of buildings in suburban Manila.