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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
FILE
Telephone 01-
Alan Penrith
нко HKD 243/9
British High Commission
OTTAWA
270 2652
Your reference
Our reference
PTZAHA
Date
10 March 1989
182
Dear Alan
VIETNAMESE BOAT PEOPLE
1.
SEAD have passed to me your letter of 24 February to Graeme Bannatyne, which enclosed a copy of Martin Beiser's Globe and Mail article of the same date. We and SEAD are both involved in various aspects of the Vietnamese boat people problem: those with a Hong Kong angle fall within our bailiwick.
2.
Boat people get wide coverage in the press, from correspondents expressing widely differing views the spectrum ranging from "we send back all Chinese illegal immigrants from Hong Kong, so why not Vietnamese?", to "everything must be done to provide these victims of communism with new homes". I do not think we would wish to try and provide a response on all ocassions. I enclose, however, a copy of our current background brief on the boat people on which you may wish to draw in response to any specific enquiries.
3. Many of the problems that Hong Kong has faced as a result of the use by economic migrants from Vietnam of what were formerly refugee escape routes are now being faced by the Canadian Government in trying to cope with their influx of "asylum seekers", not a high proportion of whom would seem to be genuine. You may have seen that at the end of February the Americans introduced a new policy of detention, screening and repatriation for Central American Asylum seekers (or at least established the legality of detention for lack of which they had previously been unable to implement the policy). It would be interesting to know how the Canadians view this. I somehow doubt that they will choose to go down the same road. Very much in the spirit of sharing common experience, it would be interesting to know what measures the Canadians are considering. I should be grateful if you could copy to us any material that you produce on this subject.
CC:
Mr Hewitt, UKMIS Geneva
Yours Ever Chantes
C C D Haswell Hong Kong Department
Mr Hanson, Security Branch, Hong Kong Chancery, Washington
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