RESTA AICTED
HOME OFFICE
Lunar House, Wellesley Road, CROYDON CR9 2BY Telephone: 01-686 0333, ext. 2341
Our reference: IMG/79 58/1026/110 Your reference:
R D Clift Esq
Hong Kong and General Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office
See/66.
8 June 1981
Dear Clifti
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG
Thank you for your letter of 29 May.
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мна уважает
J11.6.81.
f.i.
The decision to initially restrict selection by the Hong Kong Immigration Department of refugees for settlement in the United Kingdom was based on the United Nations figures that of the residual "pool" of 6242 refugees in Hong Kong, 287 had relatives in this country. In view of your estimate of being able to find only 20 under the present authority, I have had a further look at this matter.
As you may already know, the Home Secretary has recently agreed that family reunions for Vietnamese refugees should now follow the same criteria (spouse and minor children only with all other relatives subject to sympathetic consideration) as those applied to any other group of refugees. The main reason for the introduction of the more restricted criteria is that the resident Vietnamese population, previously negligible, now amount to over 14000. These family reunion criteria apply to all Vietnamese, whether in Vietnam, China or refugee camps. It does not however apply as yet to those in Hong Kong because of the balance of the 10000 quota and I would prefer to keep some balance in hand in order to be able to continue to apply more relaxed criteria to Hong Kong. That is however in the longer term and I can agree to the immediate selection of 200 refugees in Hong Kong on the same basis as applied in the past by our selection teams. We can look at the situation again when these 200 have been selected.
Can I leave it to you to pass this to Hong Kong?
you
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Gukan tagl
今
Ġ L ANGEL
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Mr Burns, SEAD, FCO
RESTRICTED