CONFIDENTIAL
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The Problem of North Vietnamese Refugees
4. Mr Cooper reminded me that North Vietnamese refugees tend to go mainly to Hong Kong; the US were not accepting many North Vietnamese and UNHCR had detected a certain reluctance among other resettlement countries to process North Vietnamese on the same basis as South Vietnamese.
5. UNHCR have a copy of the US draft guidelines for processing North Vietnamese applicants, which the US hope to issue shortly to their INS officers. I understand the guidelines state that North Vietnamese candidates are only to be considered on a case by case basis and each refugee has to establish the fact that he is escaping persecution (or would face persecution if he returned to Vietnam). In other words, he must establish that he qualifies for refugee status according to US law. UNHCR's interpretation is that everything points to the fact that the US do not intend to consider North Vietnamese as refugees for the purpose of admission to the US.
6. With this background, UNHCR fear that Hong Kong will be left with a residual caseload of around 4,000 North Vietnamese, the great majority of whom are in closed camps and few of whom would qualify for immigration status in the US or elsewhere (apart from the Nordic countries who could not absorb 4,000). If the current pattern of resettlement continues, UNHCR consider all the refugees who are not from North Vietnam will be resettled from the closed camps and the closed camp population of North Vietnamese will become the long-stayers of the future.
7.
Mr Hansson reminded me of the Thai Government's recent decision to open some of their closed camps as they had found closed camps to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they had a deterrent effect. On the other hand, not giving priority to the resettlement of refugees in closed camps could leave the host government with refugees on their hands indefinitely. After a time the deterrence policy no longer worked and could in effect back-fire on itself. The Thai Government had decided to release the blocked caseloads in batches, the first being those longest in the closed camps. UNHCR wonder whether the Hong Kong Government's decision to seek resettlement offers for the long-stayers in the open camps first and to discourage (particularly by so informing new arrivals in the closed camps) resettlement from the closed camps might back-fire in a similar way and leave Hong Kong with 4,000 North Vietnamese long- stayers in the closed camps.
now
8.
As a possible way of seeking a solution, UNHCR suggest that we discuss with the US what they plan to do in their refugee programme with ethnic Vietnamese from North Vietnam and that we also consider discussing the whole issue with all the major resettlement countries with a view
You to seeing what could be done with the North Vietnamese. (Comment: will appreciate that I was not able to mention our preliminary thoughts on this in view of the caveat in paragraph 5 of your telegram number 319).
/Resettlement
CONFIDENTIAL