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countries, meant that there would always be close scrutiny of
American policy. In Geneva, Mr Purcell had explained that the new
ceiling for South East Asia would be 50,000 of whom 12,000
(Mr Funseth corrected this to 8,000) would be allocated to the ODP.
Hong Kong were naturally anxious that their off-take should not fall
below the current level of about 300 per month. Hong Kong's refugee
population, which had fallen steadily until April 1982, had increased
gradually since then, so that the end of the problem was no longer in sight. 25% of refugees in Hong Kong had been there for over 2 years,
and 33% for 4 years or more. The authorities were very keen for
these groups to be resettled. Although closed camps seemed to have
had an effect on the number of arrivals, there were now large numbers
who had been in them for long periods, and this would inevitably
cause security difficulties. In response to Mr Funseth's question
whether there was any UK financial contribution to the camps in
Hong Kong, Mr Hoare explained that the costs were borne by the Hong
Kong Government with a subsidy from UNIICR.
6. Mr Funseth pointed out that the US had taken 100,000 refugees
from Hong Kong since 1979. This represented about 50% of the total
and there would be serious problems with Congress if other countries
did not go some way to matching this contribution. Figures put
forward by the Refugee Department were ceilings, not quotas, and
would not necessarily be filled. He agreed that figures suggested that closed camps might now be having an effect and hoped that the
downward trend in departures would continue. However, he appreciated
that Hong Kong faced a problem over the high proportion of North
Vietnamese now arriving there who were ineligible for off-take by the
US. He hoped that other countries (eg Canada, Australia) might be prepared to take these. He hoped the US would maintain its present
level of off-take, but we should not expect them to take any additional
numbers to match any further off-take by others.
7. On the question of resettlement in the US, Mr Funseth said that
their experience was that the Vietnamese were generally easier than most other refugee groups. Problems of language and cultural adjust-
ment were largely solved by the ''English-as-a-Second-Language/
Cultural Orientation'' (ESLCO) courses which the Americans ran at
Bataan in the Philippines. Now that they had expanded these to six
months it also enabled them better to monitor potential health
problems amongst the refugees. The Centre at Bataan was run under the
auspices of UNHCR and a number of other countries took advantage of
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