C
CONFIDENTIAL
PRIORITY
X
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Hong Kong has increased.
Since July 1982 the HKG have placed all
new arrivals in closed camps, in the hope that this will discourage others from coming to Hong Kong. (Previously refugees were accommodated in open camps from which they could seek employment in Hong Kong.) The policy appears to be having some effect on the numbers arriving in Hong Kong: arrivals for 1984 were 39 per cent down on 1983 figures, compared with a decrease of 11 per cent in the South East Asian region as a whole. However there are still some 10,500 Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement, the highest number of any place of first asylum in South East Asia.
10. In April 1985 the SCORRI published a report entitled "Refugees and Asylum with Special Reference to the Vietnamese". The report includes evidence by FCO and Home Office ministers. It recommends that the UK should relax its immigration criteria for family reunion cases in camps in countries of temporary asylum: that the closed camps in Hong Kong should be abolished: that a UK initiative should be used to attract offers of
additional resettlement places from other countries: that if
necessary, and as part of a burden-sharing agreement, the UK should accept a small share of those who are hard to settl
settled and X have spend years in camps: and that Hong Kong should accept for
settlement a proportion of ethnic Chinese from its open camps.
X
11. On 26 September, the Government will publish a White Paper in
response to the report. The responses to the main
recommendations relating to Hong Kong are summarised in
paragraphs 2, 3, 4 and 6 above.
BACKGROUND (NOT FOR USE)
12.
Resettlment outside the South East Asian region is at present the only realistic option for the majority of the refugees currently residing in Hong Kong's camps. Voluntary
repatriation, considered by UNHCR to be the most desirable long-ter
for
solution refugees problem is not feasible because of the lack
of volunteers