From The Minister of State
THE RT HON THE LORD GORONWY-ROBERTS
Sean Nechites,
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
11 December 1978
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HKK 341/1
RALIVED II REGISTRY KO. 51 13 DEC1973
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The Thompson
Thank you for your letter 22 November about the Hong Kong Government's policy of repatriating illegal immigrants from
China.
147
It may help if I begin by explaining the background to the present policy which dates from 1974. During the previous year the Hong Kong Government, faced with a sharp increase in the rate at which people were arriving from China, decided that something had to be done to limit the numbers. informal understanding was reached with the Chinese authorities,
An who agreed to restrict the number of immigrants crossing the border legally from China (Hong Kong has traditionally permitted all those who are given exit permits by the Chinese authorities to stay in Hong Kong if they wish to do so). At the same time the Hong Kong Government decided to reintroduce the policy, suspended during the Cultural Revolution, of returning to China any would-be immigrants caught trying to enter Hong Kong illegally. These two measures together reduced the flow of immigrants to manageable proportions; failure to take action could have threatened the maintenance and improvement of social services to the population as a whole.
an
The Hong Kong Government have always tried to apply the policy of repatriating illegal immigrants as humanely as possible In describing this policy to the House of Commons on 18 December 1974, David Ennals said that "all cases are considered on individual basis before any action to return is taken. Full account is taken of any special circumstances or cases of genuine hardship". Special circumstances in this context would certainly include the cases of people who were refugees from political persecution, as I made clear in reply to a question by Lord Segal on 4 February 1975 in which he referred to "the influx of political refugees from Communist China to Hong Kong". In my reply I repeated David Ennals' assurance that all cases are considered individually on their merits and stressed that would-be immigrants are not repatriated if there are
reasons
to believe that to do so would cause undue hardship for any reason "including the kind of reason that my Noble Friend has raised".
The Lord Bethell
73 Sussex Square LONDON W2
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