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Sir,
Meanwhile, the influx of boat people continues unabated, and Hong Kong and other places of first asylum in the South East Asian region are forced to continue shouldering a burden which becomes progressively heavier. A recent seminar involving delegates from ASEAN countries and Hong Kong concluded that the root cause of the problem lay in Vietnam, whose Government had a clear obligation to resolve it, and that it was of fundamental importance to discourage future outflows from that country. It was also clear that existing arrangements which held out the prospect or hope of automatic resettlement for all who left Vietnam, for whatever reason, were a major 'pull
factor'.
Sir, it is against the background, of a situation that can no longer be accepted by this community that we have reviewed our current policy, in consultation with HMG. In so
In so doing, we are conscious and indeed appreciative of the assistance provided by resettlement countries in taking so many of our Vietnamese refugees. We hope this process will continue. Indeed, we have greater need of resettlement places now than at any time in the last eight years. We are grateful also to the tes UNHCR and the many voluntary agencies for the part that they have played. But despite this enormous effort, there is no end in sight to the flood of people arriving here. Sir, more must be done to discourage boat people from leaving Vietnam. We have therefore concluded that the time has come to change our practice
to change our practice of automatically accepting as refugees all boat people who arrive here from Vietnam.
This was not a
not a decision which was taken lightly. Despite the great pressures upon us since boat
people first started coming to Hong Kong in / we have 1979,
never forced anyone away. Nor would we contemplate doing so now. Pushing, or towing, small, leaky boats filled