布政司署
香港下亞畢道
CONFIDENTIAL
* Our Ref.: CR 2/4821/75 III
來函擋號 YOUR REF.:
162)
GOVERNment SECRETARIAT
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
15 December, 1977
JA BStewart Esq OBE
Hong Kong & General Department F C D
سنگا
رسل الا
RECEIVED 3961
JANU973
DESK OFFICER
PA
REGISTRY Action T Awa
INDEX
No
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
1
On looking through our files, I see it is some time since we last wrote to you about the problem of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. In fact, the arrangements previously established for letting refugees into Hong Kong and processing them for onward migration elsewhere have been working fairly smoothly over the past year. Nevertheless, it is clear that we are gradually accumulating a group of refugees who are staying here longer than we would wish. There will be many more Vietnamese "boat case" refugees in Hong Kong at the end of 1977 than there were at the end of 1976. (Some 500 plus compared with 43)
2.
As you will see from the detailed breakdown of the present state of play which I enclose, all but a handful of the 534 refugees present in Hong Kong on 29 November were awaiting resettlement overseas. Most of them were admitted after we made arrangements with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the latter to provide guarantees that they would maintain the refugees in Hong Kong and resettle them elsewhere. But this guarantee has no particular time limit and 150 of the refugees have in fact been here longer than three months. These boat refugees are in addition to some 132 Vietnamese refugees who have been given approval to stay in Hong Kong since the fall of Saigon and some ten thousand plus who came from Indo-China to Hong Kong before the fall, legally or illegally, or who have overstayed.
3.
Our Immigration Department has been keeping in close touch with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Committee for European Migration regional representatives and we understand that about 300 out of the 534 will be able to go to the USA within the next three months or so. 21 others are being processed for resettlement in France and Australia. However, the remaining 200 odd, who are not eligible for admission to the USA under current US programmes, will pose us quite a problem. It is possible that some of them will eventually be accepted by the US
/contd.
CONFIDENTIAL