HKD
327
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
From The Minister of State
pa
16 December 1985
Dear Momian.
Thank you for your letter of 3 December enclosing a letter from your constituent, Ms Elizabeth Goodrum of 134 Blindman Lane, Cheshunt, about the problem of the Vietnamese refugees who are currently in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement; and the question of the availablity of British passports.
The latter question falls within the responsibility of the Home Office. I am therefore copying this correspondence to David Waddington to enable him to
comment.
Hong Kong's Vietnamese refugee problem is of great concern to both Her Majesty's Government and the Hong Kong Government and we are making every effort to resolve it as quickly as possible. It may be helpful if I set out the general background to the current situation.
I would like first to stress the size of the task that Hong Kong has faced in caring for the 100,000 Vietnamese boat people who have arrived in the territory since 1975. None have been turned away. They have all been granted temporary asylum by the Hong Kong Government and accommodated in camps until resettlement places overseas could be found for them. This is a considerable achievement for such a small, overcrowded territory. Hong Kong has also itself accepted some 14,500 Indo-Chinese for resettlement over this period.
There are currently about 9,500 Vietnamese refugees in camps in the territory. As Ms Goodrum mentions in her letter, these refugees are divided between open and closed camps.
Initially, all newly arriving boat people were accommodated in open camps. Most were resettled reasonably quickly. However by 1982 it was, becoming increasingly difficult to find resettlement places, and the Hong Kong Government saw no alternative but to take to discourage those still in Vietnam from setting out for Hong Kong. In July of that year they therefore introduced a new policy under which all newly arriving refugees would be placed in closed camps, from which they would not be permitted to seek outside employment. This policy has been reasonably successful in reducing the
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