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SECRETARY
MKK 24312
RECEIVED IN REGSOPY NO. 51
2 3 FEB 1983
DESK ORKA
INDEX
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Action Takan
251% CH 113
NO
Деви Учанні
See 35
Enter (Resettlement)
resubmit. 2523/2
27
ниад
SPS
PS/Land Belstead
swaruppus
ihitterd
QUEEN ANNE'S GATE LONDON SW
2. February 1983
) See HKK 243/52A) Daiald
See HKK 243/5 (29) Lad Ngudanar
VIETNAMESE REFUGEES IN HONG KONG
Lennox SEAD
MVD
The points raised in your note of 31 January have been discussed UND at length by officials of our Departments and Treasury and I saw the papers in December. I have now looked at them again in the light of your
comments.
futty
I recognise the problems faced by Hong Kong, but any proposal that the United Kingdom might assist by taking further Vietnamese refugees must be viewed against the extent of our existing commitments.
As you know, the United Kingdom has now accepted some 16,500 Vietnamese refugees. The Vietnamese refugee programme is estimated to have cost some £21.6 million by the end of 1982/83. These figures of cost ignore those arising from the dependence of the Vietnamese in this country on social security benefits; over 80% of those of working age are still unemployed. Finding housing for the Vietnamese has been a major problem in the pro- gramme and has contributed greatly to the length and cost of the reception phase; only now are the last reception centres closing. The long term problems facing the Vietnamese after settlement are such that I have agreed further funding of £600,000 for the refugee organisations during 1983/84 to enable them to continue their supportive work and negotiate for the services which they currently provide to be taken on by local authorities and other normal statutory networks which are, at present, ill-equipped for the job.
Although the quotas as such have been filled, you will also be aware that our commitments to Vietnamese refugees as a whole and to Hong Kong in particular have by no means come to an end. The Final Act of the Conference which adopted the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees recommended that Governments take the necessary measures for the protection of a refugee's family, especially with a view to ensuring that the unity of the refugee's family is maintained particularly in cases where the head of the family has fulfilled the necessary conditions for admission to a particular country. In accordance with this recommendation, we allow entry of the spouse and minor children of refugees already here and look sympathetically at applications from other relatives, particularly when they have formed part of the same household. Until 1980, we applied much wider criteria to applications from Vietnamese because of the small numbers then resident in the United Kingdom. Since 1981, however, we have applied the same criteria to Vietnamese applications as to all other nationalities. Nevertheless some 2,200 have yet to take up the promise of entry to the United Kingdom and applications are still being received. In the circumstances I do not consider that we would be justified in further extending the family reunion criteria generally, even to the extent of limiting any such general concession to those refugees who have succeeded in reaching Hong Kong. Some refugees in Hong Kong may well qualify to come here as a spouse or minor dependant and I will, of course, continue to look at other individual cases with a sympathetic eye.
242
The Rt. Hon. Francis Pym, MC., MP.
/cont