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A
have however indicated that this idea remains Douglas'
it is not official US Government policy.
B.
Options designed to increase the rate of departures
25. (a) Voluntary repatriation to Vietnam
be
own, and that
desirable
the most
Not suprisingly, there
UNHCR consider voluntary repatriation to
solution to refugee problems. We agree.
have been few
few volunteers for repatriation to Vietnam. Of the 20 who
have SO far applied from Hong Kong, 14 have returned to Vietnam; the
other six applications are still pending.
In response to an
approach from Mr Hartling in September 1984, the Vietnamese said
that there was no reason why Vietnam should take back Vietnamese who
did not wish to participate in the work of reconstruction and who
left Vietnam, although they were prepared to
consider applications
on a case-by-case basis. This augurs badly for any large scale
repatriation to Vietnam; and there are not in any case likely
many more volunteers.
(b) Local absorption
UNHCR also favour
Kong has absorbed
Vietnam, since 1975.
is
to be
Hong
settlement in the country of first asylum.
14,500 displaced Indo-Chinese, mostly from
Hong Kong's relative wealth might be cited as
a reason to take a greater number
number of Vietnamese. But the territory
already densely populated; it has had to deal with enormous
immigration from China in the same period and Chinese legal immigrants still number over 27,000 a year. The people of Hong Kong
would be unlikely to welcome Vietname se immigration while illegal
immigrants from China are being repatriated daily. There is always
the danger that further absorption by Hong Kong would trigger more
departures from Vietnam. Nevertheless, if the flow of
arrivals can be slowed and an adequate way found to deal with future
arrivals, it would be reasonable to expect Hong Kong to absorb a
proportion of those in centres, as part of a general programme of
resettlement or repatriation for the remainder. But the Hong Kong
Government would only consider this on the strict understanding that
it was a once and for all gesture, which would need to be linked to
international effort, with UK participation, to deal with what would then be a fixed number of refugees in Hong Kong.
an
Vietnamese
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