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2.
In answer to a question, Mr Levin confirmed
that the new measures would take effect immediately; but that they would not be retroactive; cases already approved by INS would not be affected. Mr Kassebaum
said that as a very rough indication, some 75% of the
last 3,000 cases accepted by the USA from Hong Kong
would have been ineligible under the new criteria.
This could be a misleading proportion, however, because
the 3,000 spanned a period both before and after the
December 4E exclusion. Mr Levin said this seemed a strong
argument for giving clear and systematic publicity to the changes. If Hong Kong could complement this with some
deterrent measures of its own, that would help.
3.
S for S said that although vastly smaller than
the USA, Hong Kong faced very strong political and social
pressures over the issue as well. Government was often
criticised for looking after Vietnamese refugees at a time when Hong Kong's own people could not bring in their families from China, and when fire-victims in large numbers
had to be accommodated too. He fully understood the
restrictions which resettlement countries had been intro
ducing indeed a number of countries no longer had resettle- ment programmes at all; and apart from the United States, to whom Hong Kong remained profoundly grateful, only Canada,
Australia and France were still taking refugees from Hong
Kong. As to deterrence, although Government was often
criticised for not taking the tough line which other
countries in the region had done, we would not find some-
thing like the Thai deterrent policy easy to emulate : we
would face considerable political difficulty in trying to
apply the sort of force with which the Thai were able to
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