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At the beginning, some refugees had papers issued by communes but this was no longer the case: they had now nothing to link them with China. The Chinese had accepted the first group of coast-hopping refugees to arrive in Hong Kong (68), but they did not accept any now.
4.
Mr Lindenmayer asked whether ethnic Vietnamese refugees would not risk apprehension travelling from South Vietnam to Hong Kong. Sir Jack said he believed the Vietnamese Government's complicity to be total and refugees would have no difficulty. The Vietnamese Government were also highly unlikely to keep to their agreed moratorium: he did not think it would last beyond October. Mr Engledow suggested that it might last until Dr Waldheim had reported to the General Assembly. Sir Jack said the moratorium might work until an orderly exodus scheme was operating but he could not see the UNHCR organising 10,000 departures a month, as the Vietnamese Government had requested. Mr Simington said such a programme would make it difficult to label the people concerned as refugees, as they would then have more the appearance of migrants. Mr Lindenmayer said that this definition problem would increase the reluctance of countries to take people in. There were legislative problems over migrant programmes in the US, Canada and Australia.
5. Mr Engledow said he saw the Indo-China refugee problem as the beginning of a much larger world problem. He could foresee the prospect of the Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as the Tamils and many others also wanting to get out. Sir Jack said he thought the 1 million Chinese in Vietnam would want to leave. The proportion of ethnic Vietnamese who had gone to Hong Kong had increased to 20%-25%. Estimates of the number of ethnic Vietnamese who wanted to leave or who would be
expelled were 3 million. Mr Blackie said that 1/3 of Australia's intake of refugees were either Indo-Chinese or Jewish. Australia's (and New Zealand's) small rigid economy and fixed minimum wage rate schemes made it difficult to absorb
/such people
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