CONFIDENTIAL
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B. RETURN FROM HONG KONG TO CHINA OF CHINESE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
1.
Following Ministerial approval of the arrangements agreed
locally between the Political Adviser and the Chinese, most
Chinese illegal immigrants caught while seeking to enter Hong
Kong have, since 30 November, been returned to China. Figures
for those caught and those returned in December were,
respectively, 238 and 225; the corresponding figures for January were 98 and 96.
2.
3.
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The returns provoked a predictable reaction from agencies
in Taiwan, and there have also been enquiries from Amnesty and
other organisations concerned with refugees. Generally, however, criticism has been fairly muted; and it has been appreciated that Hong Kong could not continue to absorb Chinese illegal
immigrants at the levels pertaining in 1972-1974 indefinitely. The Hong Kong Government acknowledges the importance of ensuring that the procedure for interviewing illegal immigrants
before their return is sufficient for identifying cases whose
return would involve genuine hardship - either on humanitarian
grounds or in terms of subsequent treatment by the Chinese.
Predictably, the decisions are not always easy to take. For instance, Hong Kong considered that the return of a 26-year-old
single woman who had sought to enter Hong Kong for "a better
living" and to join her mother and three brothers who were also
living there did not constitute a good ground for giving
permission to land. We have had to accept this decision:
many illegal immigrants claim to have relatives in Hong Kong,
that to allow close relationship as ground for admission would
severely frustrate the object of keeping the numbers of immigrants down. Hong Kong have told us that spouses and
parents with young children, would not normally be separated.
4. I summarised our latest information on treatment of those
returned in my submission of 26 February when I submitted a
draft reply to a letter from Mr K Clarke MP. There is still
no reason to believe that those returned receive unduly harsh
punishment.
SO