t
mounted. By this date the following numbers had arrived in Hong Kong:
Hong Kong residents Dependents
645 2,018
Total:
2,663
Of these 898 had left Vietnam by Air France via Bangkok before November 1976. In order to facilitate this part of the evacuation, we had sent two Hong Kong Immigration Officers to Bangkok. The remaining 1, 765 had left Vietnam on the Government-organized Cathay Pacific charter flight.
5.
So far as we have been able to check, it now appears
that there are only 40 persons in Vietnam holding Hong Kong Certificates of Identity and 9 CUKCs holding Hong Kong British passports.
We trust that we shall be able to repatriate these persons within the next few weeks.
6.
Also at the 13th July, there was a backlog of 1, 308 persons whose applications to enter Hong Kong had been approved by the Immigration Department and who were awaiting exit clearances from the Vietnamese authorities. On the basis that approximately 170 persons travel on each charter flight, we have secured the approval of the Vietnamese authorities to weekly charter flights in July and August, though we had to cancel the flight on the 20th July. On this basis and on the assumption that we can continue with weekly flights in September, we ought by then to have overcome the backlog.
7.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to receive applications to come to Hong Kong at the rate of about 2, 000 per month. In addition, there were about 10,000 cases waiting processing in mid-July and we are giving high priority to this. Applications on this scale not only present a processing problem, but have also caused us to look more critically at the criteria which we adopt in approving applications. We foresaw in May that what started as a humanitarian exercise to bring back Hong Kong belongers was gradually being used by persons with no claim on Hong Kong to come here. With this in mind, we now screen applications so as to give priority to the issue of entry permits to those who have a valid claim on Hong Kong either by birth or by close family relationship to an existing resident. Having sorted these out, we divide the remainder into 3 categories:
(a)
those whose sponsors have been legally resident here for 7 years or more to whom we normally issue an entry permit;
(b)
those whose sponsors arrived here before the flights started on 30th November (those in this list would be transferred to list A when they reach the 7 year requirement); and
(c)
those whose sponsors arrived in Hong Kong after 1st December 1976.
3/This
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