Mr Qua nui- Mr Stitt is
drafting the few comment. What this really means is an intake 1000 Vietnamese refugees.
CONFIDENTIAL
a mouch
from April onward. Zriciannon Mr. Qu
This is good news.
PRIME MINISTER
W.E. Dantill
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21.80.
HKK 24311
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY 51 mani4 JAN1980
Quantida Are Thabex means any
ANDEX Rampany base.
DESK OFFICER
REGISTRY Pike
SEAD
CL
(929A)
PS esters PJ)MR. BLAREN
Polpus
MR.COMTAZei Un - Mustang...
improvement? (skom Banif for
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES Mr. Nott
ino
Heil
When we agreed in July to accept an additional 10,000 Vietnamese refugees I suggested that we might take them at the rate of about 3,000 a year. It is probably that 3,000 will have arrived by mid-February 1980. We need to decide now what our target should be after that.
My object has been to make the process of taking the refugees as smooth and unobtrusive as possible and at the same time to be as helpful as we can to the Governor of Hong Kong whose problems were vividly described to us by the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary after he had seen the conditions there. So far we have been more successful than I had hoped. The voluntary bodies who are responsible for reception are working together harmoniously and local authorities are coming forward quietly with housing offers. Sir Arthur Peterson, whom I have appointed as Chairman of a co-ordinating committee, is smoothing out any local problems which arise.
I am now confident that we can and ought to proceed more rapidly than I felt able to propose before we had the measure of the problem. Not to do so would cause severe problems for Hong Kong because the Governor can only keep the countries with greater potentiality for helping - notably Canada and the USA - up to the mark by showing that we are doing as much as we can. From our domestic point of view, there are powerful arguments in addition to humanitarian considerations for getting the refugees out of the Hong Kong camps as soon as we can. They are inevitably exposed to the attention of the criminal syndicates there the Triads with their involvement
CONFIDENTIAL