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distancing the territory from the UK.
OVERSEAS STUDENTS' FEES
4.
HMG's decision to raise the recommended level of tuition fees
for students has aroused considerable feeling in Hong Kong, in view
of the territory's special relationship with the UK. This is
aggravated by the fact that by a technicality students from the
Fench overseas territories and from Gibraltar are classified as
home students. At the close of the Adjournment Debate on this
subject in the Commons on 10 July, Dr Rhodes Boyson, Minister of
State for Education and Science, undertook to monitor in October 1980
the effect of the higher fees on student admissions, while giving
no guarantee that the policy would be changed. He confirmed HMG's
readiness to help Hong Kong in the development of its higher
education system.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM CHINA
5.
Levels of illegal immigration have risen in the course of
1980 from an average of about 135 per day in January to over 300 per
day in June and July. Present policy is that those who reach base
(ie the urban areas of Hong Kong) are not repatriated.
pressure to change this policy.
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES
6.
There is local
On 5 August there were still 38,273 Vietnamese refugees in
Hong Kong. The rate of off-take from Hong Kong is the slowest of
all countries of first asylum in the region, due largely to Hong
Hong's humanitarian policy, which compares very favourably with
its South-East Asian neighbours. As a result, many resettlement
countries give priority to refugees from elsewhere in the region.
The net off-take has been particularly slow in recent weeks due to
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