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poor state of our
difficulty.
relations W
Finally a decision
thi
Vietnam will contribute to
to treat some boat people a economic migrants rather
than refugees would be a break with the
unwritten understanding reached at the 1979 conference that a l
boat-people should be treated as refugees (however in practice it is
clear that several other
concluded that many of the
rather than refugees).
governments concerned have already
people concerned are economic migrants
19. On 15 January 1985, the Hong Kong Executive Council agreed that
the Hong Kong Government should pursue the possibility of
repatriating all new arrivals who were found not to be refugees,
provided they would not be treated inhumanely. They advised that as
a first step HMG's agreement should be sought to HMA Hanoi discussing
authorities.
the matter with the Vietnamese
(c) Screening of New Arrivals
20.
TI
Recognising that repatriation is unlikely to be feasible in the
short term, the Hong Kong Government has recently examined the
possibility of introducing now a scheme to screen out "economic
migrants from genuine refugees, against
the day when repatriation
of the former might be
possible. Screening would be done by an
UNHCR observer. Those
closed centres pending
Economic migrants Would be detained as illegal
Alternatively, all would be detained initially a s
independent tribunal in the presence of a
identified as refugees would be placed in
resettlement.
immigrants.
illegal immigrants, leaving UNHCR to advise the Hong Kong Government
that particular cases should be given refugee status and transferred
to closed centres.
21. The advantages of this scheme would be:
(a) It might deter some economic migrants from coming to Hong Kong;
(b) it would be in line with Hong Kong's treatment of undocumented
migrants from other countries, including China;
(c) those granted refugee status would have a reasonable prospect of
resettlement in the West.
22. The disadvantages would be:
(a) If arrivals nevertheless continued, Hong Kong would find itself
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