[JA2AKZ]
CONFIDENTIAL
MR EGGAR'S MEETING WITH DR MEYER-LANDRUT: 8 NOVEMBER 1985
Vietnamese Refugees in Hong Kong
Essential Facts
General
1.
10,000 vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement: the largest number of any place of first asylum in South East Asia.
The refugees are spending increasingly long periods in Hong Kong because of diminishing resettlement prospects: 60% have been there
over 3 years.
Since July 1982, in order to discourage further
Vietnamese from
from setting out by boat
by boat for Hong Kong, the Hong Kong
Government have placed all newly arriving
arriving refugees in closed camps, from which they are not allowed to seek outside employment. Arrival
rate has slowed as a result, but flow nevertheless continues.
Report of Home Affairs Sub-Committee on Race Relations and
Immigration (SCORRI)
2.
A Home Office White Paper in response to SCORRI's report on
"Refugees and Asylum with Special Reference to the Vietnamese" was
published on 26 September. It announced inter alia:
(i)
(ii)
HMG's decision to accept for resettlement some 500 refugees
who have relatives in the UK but who would normally fall
outside the Home Office's immigration criteria for family
reunion cases. (Most of these are in camps in Hong Kong, but
a few will come from other places of first asylum in South
East Asia);
that, depending on the willingness shown by other resettlement countries to respond to Hong Kong's needs, HMG are prepared to
consider accepting further limited numbers from Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Government would similarly be prepared to absorb
CONFIDENTIAL