it, subject to a case-by-case consideration. Under the Chinese
nationality law children of stateless people in Hong Kong would get
Chinese nationality automatically anyway. While we understood that
the Indians did not now want to opt for Chinese nationality, if two
generations after 1997 they were still resident in Hong Kong they
might well feel differently
feel differently about this. Our view in general was
that people should have the nationality of the place in which they
were permanently settled.
(c) Mr Narajan said that the numbers concerned were so small that
he could not understand why there was a problem for HMG.
The
Indians did not want to leave Hong Kong but wanted a guarantee that
they could if they wanted to.
I reminded Mr Narajan of Lady
Young's undertaking that in the unlikely event that BN (0)s or BOCs
came under pressure to leave Hong Kong or had nowhere else to go,
we would expect the Government of the day would consider
sympathetically whether to admit them on a case by case basis, in light of their circumstances.
(d) Mr Narajan asked whether the Indians could apply for settlement
in the UK in the next few years. I said that there were a number of
avenues open to them under UK legislation, and that the Home
Secretary would certainly consider any applications on their merits.
They would however be unlikely to be able to represent in the next
few years that they were currently under pressure to leave Hong Kong. Mr Narajan said that the Indi an
the Indian community collectively had
£200 million
million invested in Hong Kong. He observed that
that this would
enable many of them to settle in the UK as persons of independent
means.
(e) Mr Narajan said that the Indians were uneasy about what would
happen in Hong Kong after 1997. They were all Sindhis and had been
a minority once before. I said that while there could be no
absolute guarantees, the Government believed that the agreement provided as much assurance about the future as any agreement could. We hoped that the Indian community would remain in Hong Kong and
continue to make its important contribution to the territory.