1
Immigration and Nationality Department
Lunar House 40 Wellesley Road
Croydon CR9 2BY
Telephone 081-760
(GTN 3822)
1555
John Walton Masters Esq.
2 Downs Road
Westbury-on-Trym
Bristol BS9 3TX
o Mr Stone, or. hur Hague, A (So there!) pa-27/6
HKD 340/4
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY 16 JUL 1991
DESK YFFICEF
|HOME OFFICE
ind
Your reference
Our reference
Date 21 June 1991
189
As you know, your letter of 14 March to the Secretary of State for Wales about the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990 has been passed to the Home Office for reply. You raised a particular point in relation to Hong Kong Chinese civil servants and their chances of success under the 1990 Act scheme.
In fact, over 65,000 Hong Kong people applied for the 43,250 places available under the first stage of the scheme.
It may well be that people have been realistic in assessing their chances of success, and that those who felt that they were unlikely to score sufficient points under the scheme did not apply. Our information from Hong Kong certainly suggests that the overall quality of applicants is high. It will, of course, be open to those who did not apply in the first stage to apply for the second allocation if they remain eligible.
In approving the selection scheme put forward by the Governor of Hong Kong, Ministers agreed that, in recognition of the importance of the public service to the future stability and prosperity of Hong Kong, points should be awarded under the selection scheme for service to the Crown. This was to enable civil servants to compete effectively with their counterparts in the private sector. The salaries earned by civil servants are irrelevant.
Only in the managers and administrators' occupational group are earnings a consideration; and because of the disparity between earnings in the public and private sectors, civil servants have their own quota of places in this group.
The number of points which should be awarded under the scheme for age was another factor which was given very close attention. It was decided that maximum points should be given to those aged between 30 and 40 because people in that group would be moving into key positions in the years up to 1997 and immediately thereafter, and because a particularly large number of them were emigrating. It was not considered right that citizenship should be awarded to Crown Servants solely on the basis of length of service.