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4. Frau Dr Heide-Blöch took the points in para 8 of Orr's letter under reference about the low proportion of family reunion cases that could be expected to come from Hong Kong. She said that FRG policy on family reunion had to be seen in the context of easing the refugees' integration into West German society; if one member of the family could speak German, they usually found it much easier to settle in. But Federal Government policy was that the off-take of other categories of refugees should continue in parallel with family reunion work; we could be sure that Hong Kong would not be forgotten. The overall rate of off-take to the FRG was, however, likely to slow down over the next few months because of a bottleneck in the reception arrangements.
5. In answer to the questions in para 3 of Orr's letter Frau Dr Heide-Blöch said that the PRC had so far made available some 18580 places for Vietnamese refugees since 1975, of michi 4000-5000 were at present unfilled. Some of the smaller Zänder had yet to respond to Chancellor Schmidt's appeal to raise the number of places from 13000 to 20000 (y letter of 9 October refers) but this was unlikely to make much difference to the overall picture. When all the available places had been exhausted consideration would have to be given to making another appeal to the Länder but it was too early to say when this might be. Some 1482 refugees from Hong Kong would have come to the FRG by the end of the year and the Auswärtiges -Amt hoped that the flow would continue. They were planning
tentatively to arrange one transport (ie a DC10 aircraft with about 265 seats) from the colony roughly every other month, but problems with reception arrangements might mean that things would more slowly. As to the criteria used in allocating places ithin the quota, Frau Dr Heide-315ch said that the Federal Government tried to keep a fair balance between all countries of first asylum. They took note of the general advice given by UNHCR (which would no doubt be available to us) though they did not always agree with it - but did not as a rule consult them about how the FRC's quota might be filled.
6. I should perhaps add that we have had some encouraging responses from the refugee organisations that we have approached about Hong Kong's problem. The Commission of German Catholic Bishops have asked their representatives in the Länder to approach the Länder governments to ask that the interests of the refugees in Hong Kong should be taken account of in any increase in the admission quotas for Indo-Chinese refugees. Caritas have also shown themselves to be well aware of Hong Kong's problem and took a leading role in organising a special transport of 125 refugees to Baden-Württerberg (see para 3 above) In general Hong Kong's predicament is regarded very sympathetically here and the Germans seen ready, within the limits of what can reasonably be expected, to do something about it. We shall do CAD best to ensure that they do not lose interest.
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yours
Stewart
SG Eldon