RESTRICTED
(c) contribute to a general solution to the problem.
No decision has yet been taken on whether or not 50 refugees should be accepted from Hong Kong, but preliminary indications are that the Home Officeare unlikely to be forthcoming on this.
Argument
6.
The UK, though no longer operating a quota as such, is not inactive in regard to the problem of Indo-Chinese refugees. Almost 700 such refugees have been admitted to, or allowed to stay in, the UK since mid-1975. 173 of these are "boat refugees". Because there is no longer a quota (our original quota of 116 having been used up and exceeded), little publicity, apart from Answers to PQs, has been given to the resettlement places we have made available. Neither have we sought publicity.
7. Although we have asked the Home Office to take 50 "boat refugees" from Hong Kong, no refugee there has so far asked to come to the UK. We should find it extremely useful, however, to be able to make this gesture to the Hong Kong authorities and, if the refugees there are still not interested in coming to the UK, to use part of this quota in accepting refugees from, say, Malaysia or Thailand. This would help our relations, not only with those countries, but also with UNHCR; and it would show the Americans
that we are making tangible efforts to help solve the general problem.
8. The Home Secretary's recent decision (which has still to be announced) could mean a significant intake of refugees for the UK
if there are a number of rescue operations at sea. On the other hand, if there are few or no rescue operations (there have been none involving British ships for some months), then our intake
could be insignificant. It should be worth putting down a marker with the Home Office that, in such an event and quite apart from the request that we take 50 "boat refugees" from Hong Kong, they should consider whether to accept a small number of boat people from Malaysia (where the problem is acute) and possibly a few families, who were not themselves "boat refugees", from camps in
/either