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CODE 18 - 17
CONFIDENTIAL
GNN 340/1
Reference.
Mr Brown has seen
Milton,
Mr Miy Con, HKD Minute to Mr. Curl Mu. Mitchell.
DFM
川
NATIONALITY REVIEW: DRAFT GREEN PAPER
1. Thank you for copies of your minute of 23 December to Mr Orr and of his reply on 29 December about the numbers (listed in an appendix to the draft Green Paper) of citizens of the UK and Colonies (CUKCs) subject to immigration control and holding citizenship through ties with an existing dependency. I accept that it is preferable to avoid any specific reference to Chinese nationality in the Appendix, and the note originally suggested has been deleted.
2. That leaves us, however, with the positive statement in paragraph 2 of the Appendix that the 3,320,000 non-patrial CUKCs connected with existing dependencies are persons "holding no other citizenship". Failure to insert some qualification at 2(b) when we know, for instance, that some CUKCs in the West Indies hold other citizenships, would have its drawbacks. The Appendix as a whole does not purport to give precise and hard facts, but we are trying to give as true a picture as we can, which incidentally will make it easier to defend against a challenge. Might it not also be undesirable to open the way to a claim on the lines that "the British Government acknowledged in a published document in 1977 that it regarded citizens of the UK and Colonies connected with Hong Kong as being solely their nationals"?
If you
3. I attach a copy of the latest version of Appendix A. think a note at 2(b) reading "(some of these people may hold other nationalities)", and referring to all dependencies, is likely to do more harm than good, we could omit it. prefer to leave it in.
But we would
5 January 1977
cc to Mr Orr, FED
CONFIDENTIAL
Mitchell
D M Mitchell
Nationality & Treaty Department