Laos
Hanoi
Hong Kong Macau 12302
963
Hainan
Thailand 9479
Da Nang
Cambodia
Philippines 2906
Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh
Malaysia 9907
'Singapore
119
As the figures show, Hong Kong now has a larger population of boat people than elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Overcrowded Hong Kong relies on the world's countries to take their share.
Sill A Favourite Port of Refuge
In 1980, 37,468 boat people from Hong Kong were resettled abroad. Only 2,093 left in the first half of 1983. The United States, the major resettlement country, will now accept less than 10% of new arrivals. Will the others languish for years in closed centres?
They seek a better life
Risking death in their flimsy boats, the Vietnamese refugees have flooded into Hong Kong up to June 1983, over 105,000 of them seeking a better life in the West. Hong Kong now holds more than 30% of all boat people in Southeast Asia. Resettlement, initially, was brisk but over the past year it has almost dried up and the refugee centres are overflowing. Cost too high for tiny Hong Kong
With five million people, Hong Kong is already one of the world's most over- crowded spots with a population density twenty times that of the U.K. and over two hundred times that of the U.S. This intense population pressure is exacerbated by immigration from China over half a million immigrants in the past five years. Illegal immigrants are sent back when they are apprehend- ed. But this is not possible in the case of boat people from Vietnam. Until July 1982, Vietnamese refugees were housed in open centres and allowed out to work each day. This favoured treatment was increasingly difficult to justify and on July 2, 1982, Hong Kong introduced closed centres.