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HK's own
been granted refugee status under the Immigration Ordinance, which was specially amended for this purpose. They have been accepted on the
understanding reached at the 1979 Geneva conference that third countries should accept as many as possible of the refugees reaching a "country of first asylum" in this case Hong Kong. It was also. generally agreed at the Geneva conference that boat people from Indochina should be considered as a group to be refugees, irrespective of individual motives for leaving. As the years have elapsed, and as boat departures from Vietnam have continued, this consensus has however come under increasing strain]
UNHCR solutions
The UNHCR has identified three durable solutions to the refugee problem:
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Voluntary repatriation (where possible). So far, only about 3,000 Cambodians have agreed to return (from Laos) and 2,300 Laotians (from Thailand).
Local Fregional Entegration of refugees in their country of first asylum. This has been possible only to a very limited extent in the case of Indochinese refugees, mainly because of/ absorbing refugees with different ethnic, cultural and linguistic backgrounds to the population of the places of first asylum; and also in Hong Kong's case
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because of the already severe overcrowding in the territory. Doo [Constrout a
locality Integration is the understandy errong from 1979 Resettlement. The United States is the first preference for Cafeena that the great majority. About 130,000 Vietnamese went there in 1975, and since then the United States has accepted a total of over 580,000 Indochinese.
Other countries have provided places as follows since 1975:
France
97,000
Canada
97,000
Australia
94,000
Hong Kong problems
FRG
23,000
Britain Japan
19,000
4,000
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The temporary or permanent settlement in its territory of thousands of refugees poses particularly severe problems for Hong Kong, with its very limited land area. For years it has been the goal of Chinese wanting to leave the mainland. Nearly 10,000 illegal immigrants were arrested trying to enter Hong Kong from China in 1984, and all were repatriated in accordance with Government policy, irrespective of any family connexions with local Hong Kong Chinese. The main influx of Vietnamese boat people began in 1979. Since then
almost Hong Kong has given temporary asylum to over 100,000 Vietnamese. first arrivals were mainly from the South and were of Chinese ethnic origin. Since 1980, however, almost all arrivals have been ethnic Vietnamese, a large minority of them from the North. All have been granted temporary asylum in Hong Kong.
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