BY BAG
CONFIDENTIAL
2.
In Qu
Quaytuli P.A.
172A
CR 11/2091/79
HKK 341
K Sullivan Esq PELING
CPG PASSPORT HOLDERS WITHOUT ONWARD VISAS
빠르ᄅ
17 August 1979
See (181
ee(1778)
I attach a copy of a list which I passed to the NCNA on 14 August (our telno 131 to you) showing the stated destinations of passport holders who have arrived here without onward visas from 1 July to 13 August. As this list shows, the majority of the cases involve people hoping to go to the US. An initial examination of the papers produced by people on arrival at the border here shows that there are a number of ways in which they appear to have been able to persuade local PSB officials to give them exit visas. Some carry visa promise letters covering a relative and in a number of cases additions have been made to these by a declaration before a notary public in the US listing other members of the family of the beneficiary. These additions are not strictly illegal, but they have, of course, no validity in terms of entitlement to a US visa. In a number of cases additional relatives may in fact be able to join other family members who have already gone to the US.
However, there have been quite a few cases where children over 21 have been allowed to leave on the basis of a visa promise letter given to one of the parents, despite the fact that generally
We it is very difficult for children over 21 to go to the US. have also seen a number of statements sworn before notaries public in the US by relatives of the travellers and in all cases these carry no entitlement to a US visa. There is a further difficulty that because numbers are not presently available for many of the different US immigration preference categories even those arriving here with genuine visa promise letters often face a very long wait.
2.
The only solution that we can see to this problem vill be for all travellers to the US to be asked to obtain a visa before travelling. This would be possible at present since the US Embassy in Peking holds a number of visa petitions on file and if anyone wishing to travel to the US wrote to them the Embassy would be able to ask the US Consulate here to transfer the papers to them if they were still held in Hong Kong. In many cases however ( I am told by the US Consulate-General) the answer would be that while a visa petition was on file the backlog would mean that the visa could not be issued for some time.
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