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Hong Kong quickly and be admitted to a different country.
Ideally, they would like some means of obtaining a foreign passport while they continued to live and work in
Hong Kong, but at present they can normally only qualify
for foreign citizenship and foreign passport by actually
leaving the territory to make a new life overseas.
The government is proposing to grant British citizenship
to a limited number of key people without them ever
having to come to Britain in order to qualify for this.
Our scheme will cover a maximum of 50,000 households
which when dependants are included means a total of up to
225,000 people. The scheme will be selective. People
will qualify under a fair points system similar to the systems operated by Canada and Australia in their immigration policies. Priority will be given to such factors as an employee's importance to his employer's business, professional qualifications, personal links with Britain and the ability to speak English. Arrangements are being made for all applications under
the scheme to be processed by 30 June 1997. The
government's scheme will be processed by 30 June 1997.
the government's scheme will be strictly limited in
numbers, scope and duration. The legislation will be
ring fenced to ensure that it cannot be used as a vehicle
to bring about wider changes in the government's immigration policy.
As the statement makes clear, Hong Kong is a British
responsibility and one which we shall not shirk. However
Hong Kong is also an international centre, with huge
international investment. We have already made it clear
to other governments, both bilaterally and in international fora, that Hong Kong's major trading
partners have a strong interest in the territory's