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back up their own policy. Nor was the effectiveness
of the Thai measures yet fully proven. We had nonetheless considered a number of possibilities, ranging from withdrawing the ability to work, through detention in closed camps, on ships, or even in a camp in China, to the distant (if highly attractive) possibility of repatriation to Vietnam. We had to weigh these options against the background of a refugee population which should be down to something like
10,000 by the end of April, but which then looked like rising again, indefinitely. Territories of first asylum
were caught in the middle, between dwindling resettlement
and a continuing outflow. DPA pointed out that denying new arrivals refugee status on the grounds that they were economic migrants would not stop them coming. The only real deterrent would be repatriation, or a credible threat of it. Mr Vine asked why we seemed to consider repatriation so unattainable : Mr Levin remarked ironically that we had been repatriating illegal immigrants from China for years. DPA explained the marked geographic and political differences
between the two cases. Mr Vine commented that nonetheless,
if we could achieve the repatriation of even a handful, the effect could be disproportionate.
4.
Mr Vine said that he had not realised how few
countries still allocated resettlement quotas to Hong Kong.
However, another reason for the United States' more
restrictive attitude to refugees was that she had, since
1979, become a first-asylum country herself; and American
public opinion had been extremely hard-nosed about the
Haitians. America's increasingly tough resettlement
policy would be vulnerable if it were breached at any
point. So while it might seem tempting to assure first-
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/asylum..