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The effects on Hong Kong's social programmes
to which both the community and the Government attach great
If the level and increasing importance - have been immense.
of illegal immigration continues at the rate of the last 20 months, it will be impossible to maintain present standards, It is let alone improve them as the Government has planned. evident from the expression of public opinion that most people in Hong Kong wish the present high rate of illegal immigration to be reduced drastically.
As the Governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, said in his policy address on 1 October, 1980 opening the current session of the Legislative Council, to solve this problem is a matter for co-operation by the authorities in Hong Kong and Guangdong. It is currently estimated that out of every 5 individuals who set out from China to cross the border into Hong Kong illegally, three are intercepted by the Chinese forces, one by the Hong Kong patrols, and one reaches base in Hong Kong. It can be calculated from the numbers who have been intercepted in the last 12 months, that in the Governor's words :
"If the guard slipped on either side of the frontier and adjacent seaboard, we would literally be overwhelmed by this wave of half a million or more that hangs over us. That is the dimension
of the threat."
A new facet of the problem has been the arrival in Macau in recent months of many thousands of Chinese immigrants, whose ultimate destination is almost certainly Hong Kong.. Those who try to come here use all sorts of means to evade controls, from forged passports to high-powered speedboats.
The Government has therefore been compelled to act, after consultation with the UK Government, the Chinese Government and the provincial authorities of Guangdong, by a series of measures which with mutual co-operation will, it is hoped, check the inrush of immigrants and enable the Government of Hong Kong
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