A Lawrence Esq 4000 Dusseldorf 1 Hoherweg 282h West Germany
HKL 3411
17 NOV 1980
CER
X
PA
то
1818.4
REGISTRY
Action Tak
An 1816
17 November 1980
2157)
I have been asked to reply to your letter of 23 October to the Prime Minister.
Your concern for illegal immigrants in Hong Kong is understood but there are two significant facts that you should be aware of: firstly, the Chinese you refer to are not refugees but illegal immigrants, and secondly, Hong Kong is a very small place and cannot possibly accommodate the flood of outsiders who may wish to settle there.
Hong Kong is perhaps unique in immigration terms. Its geographi- cal position renders it particularly vulnerable to influxes of people, most of whom come from China's Guangdong Province. These immigrants are in the main agricultural labourers attracted by Hong Kong's comparative prosperity and employment prospects. They are not, as are the Vietnamese, refugees from political and social oppression.
Hong Kong is also one of the most densely populated places in the world, with more than 5 million people fitted into its 1,060 square kilometres (90 per cent of which consists of mountainous and uninhabitable islands). The rate of increase through illegal immigration has in recent years reached unacceptable proportions. In the first 10 months of this year, some 80,000 Chinese entered Hong Kong illegally. The magnitude of this influx has brought severe strain to the Territory's social and financial resources, particularly in the fields of housing and employment, and has caused considerable popular concern.
The element of the problem was that, by existing regulations, immi- grants who successfully evaded border security and reached the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon were permitted to stay. The new measures that came into effect on 26 October are merely an extension of the previous policy introduced in 1974, under which illegal immigrants caught entering Hong Kong were repatriated. The new measures enable the authorities to repatriate all illegals and
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