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Home Affairs Sub-Committee on Race Relations and Immigration :
Inquiry into Refugees
Briefing for Oral Evidence to be given by Mr Luce, 4 February 1985
I
Opening Remarks
We are deeply concerned to see an easing of the problem confronting Hong Kong over the Vietnamese refugees there and welcome the opportunity that your investigation affords to re-examine the
issues.
There have been several developments of which I should tell you
since our memorandum was submitted to you in October last year.
These relate particularly to exchanges with other governments and
UNHCR officials about the problem we have in Hong Kong.
At the UNHCR Executive Committee meeting in Geneva last October,
the UK Permanent Representative, Dame Anne Warburton, again raised
the problem of refugees in Hong Kong in urgent terms, as she has done regularly at previous meetings. She expressed our regret that the number of resettlement opportunities for those in Hong Kong camps was continually declining, and urged those countries with large resettlement programmes to include an off-
take from Hong Kong.
We have also had a number of further recent bilateral contacts
with major resettlement countries [not for use: eg the United States].
In these contacts we have again come up against the problem out-
lined in Part II of our memorandum to the Sub-Committee ie the
reluctance of other countries to do more to help Hong Kong in
the absence of a further UK quota. We have continued to point
out to the major resettlement countries that the record of the UK and Hong Kong in accepting 19,000 and 14,000 Vietnamese
and 14,000 displaces Indo-Chinese refugees respectively is an extremely good one.
There can be no easy way out of the problem. In your meeting
with David Waddington on 17 December the difficulties of absorbing
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