C
Refugees Arriving via China
9.
Many of the Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong in recent weeks in small boats appear to have spent some time in China en route. The Hong Kong Government have tried to persuade the Chinese
Government to accept them back under the arrangements for the repatriation of illegal immigrants, but the Chinese Government have refused to accept responsibility for any but a small proportion of them (those where there was firm evidence that they had settled in China). Hitherto the office of the UNHCR have not regarded Vietnamese people arriving from China as refugees, but we hope that they can be persuaded to treat them in the same category as other small boat refugees (particularly following indications that the Americans do not necessarily consider such people to be ineligible for the US refugee settlement programme). They will not, however, be easy to resettle since they are mostly peasants from North Vietnam, without the qualifications and/or family connections in western countries that make refugees from South Vietnam relatively easy to resettle.
Nor of course do any of those from North Vietnam have any former links with the American authorities in the South, which means that
they are also excluded from another of the major categories of those those who are eligible for settlement in the US.
Resettlement Programme
10. In response to the Governor's pleas for assistance, the then Home Secretary anno inced on January that the United Kingdom would accept an additional 1,000 Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong over the next 12-15 montns as part of a total commitment to take 1,500 Vietnamese refugees from the region (the remainder being split equally between Thailand and Malaysia). In addition, our Embassies have approached eighteen other governments to ask them to help also (the response has been generally sympathetic, but there have been few concrete offers). We are also supporting the UNHCR in his search for an international solution through a programme agreed with the Vietnamese to allow people to leave Vietnam direct to countries of permanent resettlement. We have also confirmed that we are prepared to participate constructively in implementing a plan proposed by the ASEAN countries (and supported by the Governor of Hong Kong) to set up a processing centre for Vietnamese refugees on an island which the Indonesian Government have offered to make available for the purpose.
/(We have however