CONFIDENTIAL
33. We need to initiate to initiate
discussions with the Home Office
on the issues involved as
letter to the Home Office
is likely,
soon.
If, as
soon as possible. My draft
proposes that officials meet
Home Office officials respond
negatively, an approach at Ministerial level will be needed. We may in the end have no option but to take a proposal for a new UK offtake to H Committee.
34.
In the light of our exchanges with the Home Office at
official level I will submit to Ministers as early as
possible any recommendations for further action.
сбо
8 July 1986
CO Hum
Hong Kong Department
1. I fear this submission is very lengthy. It boils down
to the fact that:
2.
i) the refugee inflow to Hong Kong will not simply
cease: indeed it shows signs of growing;
ii)
resettlement has had a temporary boost as a
result of our own (small) increase and the
diplomatic effort we were able to mount on the back
of it; but "compassion fatigue" will get worse. There are already signs that American resettlement from Hong Kong next year will be considerably less
than for the current period.
There are no easy options. Somehow we must find ways
of stemming the outflow from Vietnam. Involuntary repatriation is highly unattractive (and was considered by Ministers last
year to be politically unacceptable). But we must, I think,
wd UNHER get together now with other countries to see whether a distinction can be made between genuine refugees and economic migrants. We shall then have to seek ways of either ensuring that the latter group do not leave Vietnam or that they are
s/to
/sent
CONFID mar