ELIAND
Recommendation 5:
temporary asylum
(i)
Britain's willingness
to relax its family reunion criteria
for
Vietnamese in camp s in countries of
should be used as a bargaining counter to
additional
attract offers of
resettlement places from other countries.
(ii) The aim of such negotiations should be to reduce drastically the size of Hong Kong's Vietnamese refugee population and to resettle all those whose stay has been prolonged.
in camp s
1. HMG share the view of the Sub-Committee that acceptance of a
new intake of refugees from Hong Kong by Britain could evoke an
increased response from the major resettlement countries and
thus help to resolve Hong Kong's Vietnamese refugee problem. In
their memorandum submitted to the Sub-Committee the FCO made
clear their belief that the effect of the UK accepting a further
quota might be to encourage other countries to take more. The re
obviously be no guarantee
of this, but such a view would
se em to be supported, as the Sub-Committee's report notes, by
the responses
from the United States Government and the
Australi an Government, and
also that from the United Nations
High Commissioner
Refugees (UNHCR).
Subsequent
can
for
conversations with UNHCR
representatives have reinforced this
view.
2.
Our
refugees
agreement
to take
an
additional
number of Vietnamese
into the United Kingdom c an clearly be used as an
argument to persuade other countries to make offers of additional
resettlement places. HMG do not underestimate the difficulties
of achieving such an
outcome, since these countries do not owe US
any thing in this respect. Many countries have already assisted generously with the resettlement of refugees from Hong Kong and
HMG and HKG are grateful for this help. The FCO will, however, press other countries as actively as possible, both bilaterally
and multilaterally, in order to maximise the impact of our latest
In particular, approaches will be made to those
that already take large numbers of refugees
decision.
countries
from
CONFIDENTIAL***