282
d for illegal ot represent are dealing city colony, wing at an asons which its utmost The
ccess.
ing housing, d so equally Hong Kong that strain it must be would be an State of this ion for the
ervision of
ose that if a his occasion d. It is not ʼn to present ¡provided it demonstra- Kong have petitions to of public or istance, the eded to the nse of other
Hong Kong ling housing
ramme, over than 46 per ave already ised public it that total eople. New dat a rate es a year in Intention to 65 per cent. a country ople will be ne of which t subsidised. live by any e impressive being carried itory which shortage. I y the noble quite sure Government ot considered ertainly give of the new
283
Hong Kong:
[7 MARCH 1979] houses are being built on land created by flattening hills and filling in the sea.
I should like to stress the added dimen- sion that is brought to this problem by the relentless rise in immigration into Hong Kong, from both China and Vietnam. We have heard descriptions of the circum- stances and the conditions of life, in Hong Kong which, as my noble friend said, are indeed in too many cases appalling. But people are fleeing some- thing even worse in order to get into Hong Kong, and the proportions of the problem of illegal immigration into Hong Kong despite those conditions is something that is commanding international concern and attention.
Last year, some 70,000 people entered Hong Kong legally from China. Another 30,000 entered illegally. The impact of immigration on such a scale must be clear to all of us, particularly when it is borne in mind that the equivalent for a country the size of the United Kingdom would be an influx of about one and a quarter
million immigrants in one year, and going on at that rate year by year. The Govern- ment have made repeated representations to the Chinese Government about this. We believe that the Chinese Government understand the difficulties which the arrival of people from China in such large numbers is creating for Hong Kong, and are making genuine efforts to reduce the numbers.
I wish that I could say the same about the Vietnamese Government and the flood of refugees from Vietnam. Noble Lords will be well aware of the much publicised
Arrest of Petitioners
284
cases involving the "Huey Fong" and the Sky Luck", which between them brought nearly 6,000 refugees from Vietnam and dumped them on Hong Kong with its limited resources. What they may not realise is that since the beginning of this year almost as many refugees have arrived in Hong Kong in their own boats --the two figures together approximate to those which we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Elton--and they keep on coming.
I am sorry to say that there is every leave Vietnam with the connivance- reason to believe that most of these people indeed, the active connivance and assis- tance-of Vietnamese officials. The British Government have made their views on this despicable trade in human misery very clear to the Vietnamese Government and will continue to do so until the traffic is stopped.
Of course, there is a problem in Hong Kong. There is also a problem of the influx into Hong Kong, both illegally from addressing ourselves to whatever is happen- China and inhumanly from Vietnam. In ing in Hong Kong and to what has hap- pened in Hong Kong in regard to this incident and its causes, let us not forget the appalling problem which faces Hong Kong and the rest of South-East Asia as a result of the actions, not of individuals but of governments, which are driving whole communities out of their own countries into leaking boats, and creating conditions in Vietnam which impel thousands of people to take very possible means of escaping and to fetch up even among the boat dwellers of Hong Kong.
་