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resettlement. This decision was announced in the White Paper which the Government published on 26 September in response to the recent report of the Home Affairs Sub- Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (SCORRI), "Refugees and Asylum with Special Reference to the Vietnamese". Most of the refugees will come from camps in Hong Kong (a few will come from other places of first asylum in South East Asia). They all have relatives in the UK, but their cases would normally have fallen outside the Home Office's immigration criteria for family reunion cases. Altogether some 19,000 Indo-Chinese refugees, including over 12,000 from Hong Kong, have been resettled in the UK since 1975.
Britain cannot solve this problem alone: it must be shared by the international community. Since the White Paper was published, we have been actively pressing other resettlement countries, in cooperation with the Hong Kong Government and UNHCR, also to take additional refugees from Hong Kong. It is still too early to assess the overall results of our efforts, but there have been some encouraging results. Australia for example has announced that it will take an additional 200 or more refugees from Hong Kong between now and July 1986. I should like to reassure Ms Goodrum that it is certainly not our intention that the refugees in Hong Kong should become "forgotten people". On the contrary, we are most concerned about their plight and attach the greatest importance to finding permanent solutions for all of them as early as possible.
I am returning the enclosure to your letter, a copy of which has been retained for our file.
Mrs Marion Roe MP House of Commons London SWLA OAA
Your
Tim
Tim Renton