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Mr White
PS/Mr Rifkind
No
HKK 340/1
CGE
31/8
HONG KONG: NATIONALITY
1.
The opinion of our Legal Advisers, the Attorney General of Hong Kong and the Home Office Legal Adviser in the person of Mr Pakenham-Walsh that there is no legal objection to adding a title including the word 'national' to the passports of British Dependent Territories citizens opens up questions that must be discussed with the Home Office before we can brief the Prime Minister on nationality in relation to Hong Kong.
Recommendation
2.
To write as in the attached draft letter from Mr White to Mr Hyde, the DUS at the Home Office responsible for immigration and nationality matters. Hong Kong and General Department, Migration and Visa Department and Legal Advisers agree.
Background
3.
Ministers will wish to know of this from the outset but it may be best for them not to be too directly involved in the first round of correspondence which will identify the areas of agreement or otherwise between the two Departments. We shall submit further in the light of the Home Office reply which can be expected to concentrate on immigration aspects.
4. Home Office officials have told us that they will make the point that the nationality legislation is comprehensive and that any arrangements made for Hong Kong will have to apply elsewhere. Thus if Hong Kong describes its BDTCs as British nationals in their passports we shall have no grounds for preventing other dependencies doing the same. Nor should we be able to resist a demand for British Overseas Citizens and British Protected Persons to be similarly described.
20 August 1982
cc:-
PS/Lord Belstead
Mr Donald
Mr
Mr Clift, HKGD
Christophan Hocarl's
C J Howells
Nationality & Treaty Dept.
My Meal $25/0
Mr. McQuade uten
Miss Brooks, Legal Advisers Mr Cambridge, MVD
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