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4. Mr Luce said that he could
that he could not pretend that conditions in the
closed centres were
were satisfactory. The Government was not complacent
about them.
But it faced a dilemma: the UK had taken the lead
1979 and as a result had accepted nearly 20,000 Vietnamese. I t still took ODP and ship rescue cases. However 80% of the Vietnamese
here were unemployed. Ideally he would like to see as many countries as possible accept refugees from Hong Kong. But it was
difficult to expect them to take more unless we did too. Ennals agreed. Mr Luce said that our soundings indicated that if we summoned an international conference now, the reaction of other countries would be simply to ask what the UK was doing to help.
5.
the response they had received
Lord
Mr Luce asked why the BRC were no longer asking the Home Office to accept the
the group of 584 refugees whom they had proposed at
at their last meeting with him in January 1984. Lord Ennals explained that
from Mr from Mr Waddington was so negative that the only positive way to proceed was to ask him to look at
particular cases on an individual basis. The 584 refugees whom they had previously proposed had anyway been selected in a rather rudimentary way. UNHCR had conducted a computer search based on a particular definition of close relatives. It was possible that not
all those 584 would want to come here, or that not all of their relatives would want them to come. Also some might by now have been
resettled elsewhere. On the other hand the BRC knew of other
compassionate cases in addition to the 584. They could probably pick about 500 over a year with a good claim for resettlement on a family reunion basis.
6. Miss Pearce said that
that during her recent visit to Hong Kong she had interviewed, at their
their request, several such refugees. They were the saddest cases she had ever seen in her long experience of refugee work.
7. Lord Ennals said that integration in Britain of some refugees was hampered by frustration that their relatives were unable to join them.
8. Mr Luce asked, on an exploratory basis, how BRC would view the idea of cutting down on our
commitments in order to give
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