Gerald Ford and America's "moral obligation" to refugees

Fifty years ago, when the city of Saigon fell and the U.S. military intervention in Southeast Asia came to an end, President Gerald Ford faced a choice: Many anti-communist South Vietnamese feared forced relocation and political persecution at home, and looked to America for refuge. But the American public was bitterly divided over whether to accept such a large influx of refugees. At the time, Lesley Stahl reported on the "overwhelmingly hostile" mail received on Capitol Hill about the issue; one letter, from a Nebraska constituent, read, "They bring only disease, corruption, and apathy."

The U.S. unemployment rate sat at nearly 9 percent, a post-World War II high. To many, bringing destitute Vietnamese to American shores seemed nonsensical.

But President Ford saw the issue in stark moral terms: "There are tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese intellectuals, professors, teachers, editors, and opinion leaders who have supported the South Vietnamese cause and the alliance with the United States, to whom we have a profound moral obligation," he said.