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OXFAM
REPATRIATION
樂施會
Hong Kong is a small and crowded place. Housing and other social services are under considerable pressure. The steady development of the territory would be threatened by large scale immigration, and so illegal immigrants are repatriated to their country of origin.
The boat people are treated not as illegal immigrants but as refugees. However, there are signs that during 1987 the rate of resettlement of these people from Hong Kong will slow down, partly because some countries refuse to accept that they are really refugees. The U.S. government has stated that, although it is prepared to accept 125 refugees per month from Hong Kong, it can find only 50 to 70 per month who meet its definition of a refugee.
There is little doubt that many of the more recent arrivals in Hong Kong are economic opportunists, not refugees in the usual sense of the word. They are driven by the same urge as illegal immigrants from China. So why are they not treated in the same way and repatriated?
The Attorney General told the Legislative Council in January that refugees could only be sent back to Vietnam if "the government of Vietnam would accept them, and provided that we could be satisfied that they would not be treated inhumanely on their return. It (the Vietnamese government) has given no indication that it would be prepared to meet either of these provisions."
We fully accept that a repatriation programme could not start without such assurances. It would be indefensible for Hong Kong to return people to Vietnam if it were likely that those people would then be mistreated.
However, if agreement could be reached on repatriation, the scale and complexion of Hong Kong's refugee problem would change dramatically. Of course, those people already here would still be treated as refugees requiring resettlement in a third country it would be wrong to change their status. Care would also be needed to ensure that genuine refugees were still able to find a safe haven in Hong Kong. But people who were not refugees could be treated in exactly the same way as illegal immigrants from China and repatriated. The problem would become manageable.
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