SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
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DSR 11C (Revised 5/87)
in an effort to deter the influx, a policy of screening
all new arrivals was introduced to distinguish genuine
refugees from the rest. All post 16 June arrivals are
not automatically given refugee status: they are detained
to await screening. If they fail to meet the necessary
refugee criteria they must remain in detention until
arrangements can be made for their return to Vietnam.
Unclassified
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
The screening policy has regrettably failed to deter.
Since its introduction last June, over 19,000 boat people
have arrived in Hong Kong. So far this year (to 19 May)
there have been just under 10,000 arrivals (over double
the rate in 1988). But the real explosion in numbers has
taken place very recently: 5,600 arrivals since the
beginning of May and over 1,000 in the past two days
alone. We must assume that this level of arrivals will
continue throughout the summer, when weather conditions
are generally favourable. If this happens, many
thousands more will reach Hong Kong in the next few
months.
Hong Kong's capacity to accommodate new arrivals is
already stretched to the limit. All the existing centres
for boat people are full (indeed some would say seriously
overcrowded). The authorities have been using ferries as
emergency accommodation. These too are now full.
In purely numerical terms, the crisis has not yet
reached the scale of the problem Hong Kong faced in 1979,
when some 70,000 had to be taken in at short notice.