In
of the resumption of normal commercial flights from Vietnam. arriving at this assessment the Director has borne in mind that the Vietnamese authorities are showing every sign of wanting to reduce the size of their Chinese population. For their part Chinese families are resorting to all manner of means of establishing dependant status on someone in Hong Kong or with permission to come here. For example, priority dependants, who were unmarried when they applied for entry to Hong Kong arriving here on special flights are now beginning to apply for the entry of wives or husbands whom they married lawfully between the receipt of their Hong Kong entry permit and their departure from Ho Chi Minh City.
Revised Criteria for Dependants
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Now that practically all priority dependants have either reached Hong Kong or been issued with Hong Kong entry permits, the great bulk of outstanding and future applicants will be dependants of dependants involved in the transfer here of whole family groups having no previous direct links with Hong Kong. In order to prevent the substantial increase in population which would result from the application of 1968 policy to such cases, it is proposed subject to the advice of Council to introduce a special set of criteria designed to exclude the great bulk of stateless dependants of dependants now living in Vietnam.
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The proposed criteria, which would be applied to all outstanding and future applications, are as follows:
Applications from stateless Dependants in Vietnam
Until further notice, entry for settlement will be restricted to:
(a)
wives;
(b)
husbands;
(c)
unmarried dependant children under 21;
(d)
an aged dependant parent living alone in
Vietnam whose main family unit is in Hong Kong;
(e)
cases involving particularly strong humanitarian grounds.
CONFIDENTIAL