Vietnam's place in international migration is by far marked by the flow of refugees tha began in the 1970s, after the end of the war. A large number of refugees found resettlement in North America, Australia and Europe. With the repatriation of asylum seekers in Hong Kong and the closing of refugee camps in Southeast Asia the outflow of Vietnamese refugees can be considered finished. As a result of large communities in countries of immigration, with the right to petition for family reunification, permanent migration from Vietnam continues.
Vietnam had a government controlled labor export program since 1980 with the Soviet Union and the countries that were part of the Soviet Union sphere of influence. Between 1980 and 1991 approximately 300,000 Vietnamese migrants worked in those places. With the demise of the Soviet Union, new regulations were issued in 1991, allowing Vietnamese companies to export labor.