refuge".
"First asylum" is a concept which arose out of the understanding reached at the 1979 Geneva conference on Indo-Chinese refugees, namely that all those leaving Vietnam should be presumed to be refugees and given asylum prior to resettlement in third countries. It does not have a longer history, although the general concept of asylum for those determined to be refugees is of course of much longer standing.
It can reasonably be argued that "first refuge" would be more appropriate in a situation in which the 1979 understanding no longer applied. (In other words boat people would be given refuge but there would no longer be a presumption that they also qualified to be given asylum and resettlement in a third country.) But to comment directly on the point would signal too clearly our intention to move to a new policy in Hong Kong.
CONFIDENTIAL