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7. (contd)
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in the respective capitals (and also UK M I S Geneva) to take supporting action. I imagine that instructions should properly go from London and you should already have most of the necessary background in my letter of 21 July to Pat Morgan (not to all). Annex III to that letter shows which countries have taken refugees in the past from Hong Kong, mostly from the "CLARA MAERSK". At present only the Canadians have a programme with specific provisions for taking refugees from Hong Kong: 5 families a month out of an overall monthly total of 50 families. The Australian programme is unfortunately concentrated on
a batch of names was put
Malaysia/Thailand/Singapore: recently to the Australian Commission here of refugees with relatives in Australia but in no case was the relationship sufficiently close (spouses, children) for them to be acceptable under family reunion provisions within standard Australian immigration policy.
8.
We shall send you a telegram early next week updating the relevant statistics and listing all the missions which we shall be approaching. We should be grateful if UK M IS Geneva would then chip in with the names of any countries which we are not aware of as having taken refugees from places other than Hong Kong; or of any which, although they have not yet taken refugees from Vietnam, might now be persuaded to do so.
9.
I realise that support for our efforts here to get more countries to take refugees from Hong Kong will involve you and posts in much work and that the results may well be disappointing. However, the problem is fast
approaching the dimensions of that which we had in 1975 with the "CLARA Maersk" and concerted efforts then did eventually result in over 1,000 refugees being accepted by countries other than the U S. We are, of course, extremely anxious to avoid being forced by circumstances into opening refugee camps here. Please let me know by telegram if it
·would help if we were to send you, by telegram, suggested points for posts to use when making approaches on our behalf
Yours
I ain (I C Orr)
ours ever,
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