MR GOODLAD'S VISIT TO HONG KONG: 25-28 MAY
VIETNAMESE MIGRANTS
References: A: Latest statistics on situation
Background
in Hong Kong
B: Expenditure on Vietnamese Boat People
by HMG
Vietnamese Migrants
1.
Since 1975 more than 175,000 Vietnamese migrants have
arrived in Hong Kong which has continued to be a country of
first asylum. Until 1988 all arrivals were treated as refugees and resettled in the West. Britain accepted over
13,000.
2. From the early 1980s it became increasingly obvious that the majority of those leaving Vietnam were economic migrants rather than people fleeing persecution and the United States
and other Western countries were unable to accept these people for resettlement as refugees. The situation in Hong Kong became serious in the mid 1980s, when a number of new arrivals began to exceed the rate of resettlement. A major new influx in 1987 and 1988 led to the introduction of
screening in Hong Kong in June 1988.
3. An international conference held in Geneva in June 1989
endorsed a Comprehensive Plan of Action providing for the maintenance of first asylum, the introduction of screening of new arrivals on a region-wide basis, the resettlement of those found to be refugees after screening and the
repatriation of those found not to be refugees.
4. Screening in Hong Kong has been developed with the full cooperation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The criterion used is that contained in a 1951 United Nations Convention and its 1967 protocol relating to
the status of refugees. The Convention states that a person is a refugee if he or she has a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion
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