E.R.
J
Hong Kong Immigration Department could give an estimate of the
number of children likely to be covered by any concession and
would begin work on this.
14.
A major task facing Mrs Dee's department was the changeover
from BDTC status to BN (0) status. This could involve them in
collecting in and issuing around 3.2 million passports. They
were about to amount a low-key publicity campaign.
15.
Mrs Dee was concerned over the planning for the handover to
the BTC of UK visa work currently undertaken by her department.
She needed to be closely involved in the planning which should
commence shortly. Questions such as whether any of her staff
were to be transferred to the BTC or whether she should plan to make phased redundancies in the were forefront of her mind. I
said that this was a matter for my colleagues in the FCO and we
in the Home Office had not been involved. I would relay her
concerns to the FCO.
16.
Mrs Dee's department had recently faced a spate of requests
from the Department of Employment to do checks on cooks who had
applied to come to the UK. I expressed surprise at this as I
could not see how a cook would qualify for a work permit. Mrs
Dee confirmed that the checks
the checks had indeed confirmed that the
person had no claim under the Immigration Rules to enter the UK. I asked her to write to me with facts and figures so that we in B2 could raise this with the Department of Employment.
17. Mr Lawrence Leung, Director of Immigration I put to Mr
Leung the proposal of a reference in the Governor's Report to an
increase in the numbers of recommendations in 1992 that I had
already mentioned to others and registered with him the need for
the Home Office to be involved at an early stage in any of review of the schemes I also said that the Hong Kong Government should
not assume that the Home Secretary of the day would be prepared
to modify the present scheme.
18. Mr Leung said that the preference in Hong Kong would be for
the second tranche to follow immediately on from the first. I