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COMELCO
Office of Members of the Executive and Legislative Councils
行政立法兩局議員辦事處
The Rt. Hon. Margaret Thatcher, MP,
Prime Minister,
10 Downing Street,
London SW1A 2AA,
United Kingdom.
R
5th July, 1989.
Dear Prive Minister
Allen Lee and I were most grateful for the opportunity to see you to explain Hong Kong's anxieties. We were encouraged by your sympathetic understanding of the need for action to lift people's spirit here.
You can understand our disappointment that you do not feel able to restore the right of abode for all Hong Kong British subjects because Britain cannot accept the potential of over 3 million people exercising their rights. We are convinced that this would not happen even in the worst case scenario. But the knowledge that there is an alternative home in Britain would provide badly needed confidence to Hong Kong people to make a commitment to live and work in Hong Kong without the constant preoccupation of searching for a second passport.
The Foreign Secretary who just left last night saw at first hand the despondency and low morale which are doing so much damage to this community. I hope that you will change your mind but if you still hold the view that only a more generous application of flexibility provisions under the Nationality Act and Immigration Rules can be considered at this moment, I urge most strongly that a generous package needs to be offered. Such a package will need to be seen by the community as a sincere and generous gesture, not a derisory one; and which will encourage the mobile professionals and middle managers to stay in Hong Kong while a solution is being found for the rest of the population.
Hong Kong is going through very anxious times. We need your personal help and support.
Jenn Sinneely,
Lydia Dunn
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Legislative Council Building, 8 Jackson Road, Central, Hong Kong. ##†RAEI✰✰ Tel: 5-8440700