布政司署
香港下亞畢道
CONFIDENTIAL
THIS IS A COPY
*** OUR REF.: SCR 6/2091/55
來函檔號
79
GOVERNment SECRETARIAT
24
LOWER ALBERT ROAD
HONG KONG
THE ORIGINAL HAS BEEN RELATED J22.5 D 1979.
K YOUR REF. IN THE DEPARTMENT UNDER SECTO haven
a
3) OF THE PUBLIC RECORDS ACT SHE a lot of interesting background
material here, and a for from
RJT McLaren Esq
Hong Kong & General Department encouraging
year
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overall pictive. But
no action is required from usat this stage.
W. E. Martill
145
LEGAL AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM CHINA
As you know, we are still waiting for a reaction from the Chinese to our suggestion that there should be a meeting between officials to try to find ways of reducing the flow of legal immigrants. The NCNA say that they are still awaiting a response from Canton which they had expected late last month or early this. I am keeping up the pressure. Meanwhile, you may find it useful to have the latest figures. We have not reported these telegraphically since February. The daily average of those arriving without onward visas was then 270 (Hong Kong telno 350).
2.
In March the daily average went down slightly to 246 and there was a further slight reduction in April to 226. On a number of days towards the end of April totals fell beneath 200 and we hoped this was the beginning of a marked downward trend. This has not been borne out by subsequent figures. The average for May to date is 216 daily, with 250 arriving yesterday, 8 May.
3.
The reduction from the February level is far too small to be of any comfort and does not yet provide evidence of any effective new measures on the Chinese side
It is of course true that, even
if the Chinese were willing to take stronger action following Debg's remarks in Peking, these would take time to show up in the figures. It is possible that the difficulties we are having in getting a date for a meeting from the authorities in Canton is because they would prefer this to take place against the background of evidence that they were taking measures to tackle the problem. NCNA have twice dropped hints that they are expecting numbers to come down. It is hard to know whether to take this seriously since they gave similar hints last June with converse results.
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