boat people


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boat people

pl.n.
Refugees, usually political ones, who attempt to flee from their native country to other countries by boat.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

boat people

pl n
refugees, esp from Vietnam in the late 1970s, who leave by boat hoping to be picked up by ships of another country
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

boat′ peo`ple


n.pl.
refugees who have fled a country by boat, usu. without sufficient provisions.
[1975–80]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
Translations

boat people

nboat people mpl
Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995
References in periodicals archive ?
Formed in 1980 to respond to the needs of the first wave of Vietnamese refugees, Boat People SOS (BPSOS) has provided relief, assistance, and support to these and subsequent immigrants in search of freedom and a dignified life.
"As Colombia and cocaine is to the U.S.," he warns, "the Pacific Rim and ice [crystal meth] will be to Australia." Mass migrations of boat people, he adds, can be expected.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese from the south fled the country (many as "boat people") and hundreds of thousands more who stayed in Vietnam were sent to "re-education camps," where they endured forced labor and indoctrination until they were determined to be sufficiently loyal to the new regime.
This year alone, more than 20,000 African boat people have arrived in the Canary Islands - with another 3,000 estimated to have died in the attempt.
It was 1978, and the exodus of boat people had just begun.
The Indonesian government quickly stated that bilateral ties with Australia could be strained if asylum is offered to boat people claiming rights abuses.
Choy, The Boat People and Achievement in America: A Study of Family Life, Hard Work, and Cultural Values (Ann Arbor, 1989).
Most of the Vietnamese residents are themselves "boat people," or are the children of refugees who fled Vietnam.
But it is also a one-sided book because its authors omit a sympathetic account of the Australian government's rationale for intercepting and detaining or deflecting boat people.
Haiti's army ousted Aristide, Haiti's first freely elected president in 1990, eight months after his inauguration and instigated a reign of terror until the US sent 20,000 troops in 1994 to end the military dictatorship, restore Aristide and halt an exodus of boat people to the shores of Florida.
It is estimated that as many as 40 per cent of the Vietnamese boat people died en route either through drowning or at the hands of pirates.