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BACKGROUND BRIEF
VIETNAMESE MIGRANTS IN HONG KONG
Since 29 October 1991, 123 Vietnamese illegal immigrants have been repatriated from Hong Kong to Vietnam. This was the first stage towards the implementation of the Orderly
Repatriation Programme, which was agreed by the Vietnamese, British and Hong Kong Governments in October 1991. The programme offers a way towards a humane and durable solution
to the Vietnamese migrant problem. It is also in accordance with the provisions of the Comprehensive Plan of Action (CPA), which was agreed and came into effect in June 1989 at
the second International Conference on Indo-Chinese Refugees
(ICIR), and normal international practices. The CPA states that only refugees should be resettled in third countries. and that those persons found not to be refugees should
return to their country of origin. After 29 October there was a dramatic surge in the number of people volunteering to
return to Vietnam. We hope that most non-refugees will volunteer, but clearly there will be some who will not. For
these pople there will need to be further repatriation flights from time to time.
Background to the problem
Since the fall of Saigon in 1975, large numbers of people
have left Vietnam. In all, over 185,000 have been granted temporary refuge in Hong Kong (the total population now stands at 57,000). Under the agreement reached at the first ICIR in 1979, all Vietnamese arriving in countries in the region were accorded refugee status and offered resettlement in the West. In the early to mid-1980s, the Vietnamese refugee population in Hong Kong steadily diminished as the programme of resettlement took effect, with some 13,000 coming to Britain. But from 1986 the situation
deteriorated, as arrivals began to exceed the willingness of
countries in the West to take people in.
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