Home Secretary
RESTRICTED
हिमच
FROM: Secretary of State
DATE:
July 1992
RIGHT OF ABODE IN THE UK FOR CERTAIN CHILDREN OF HONG
KONG PARENTS
1.
I was grateful to you for looking at this problem at
such short notice, and for agreeing a sympathetic line
for me to take at my press conference in Hong Kong. The plight of this small group of families has attracted
considerable attention in Hong Kong [[see for example the
enclosed copy of an editorial from the South China
Morning Post on the day after my Press Conference)]. are widely seen as deserving of special consideration.
They
2. I recognise that the children concerned are not alone
in being affected by the entry into force of the British
Nationality Act on 1 January 1983, and I understand your
reluctance to give a blanket undertaking without the time
to look at the issue in more detail. I was encouraged
that you told Tristan Garel-Jones that you thought that
with a generous interpretation of existing guidlines, over half these children should succeed in applications
for full British citizenship. I hope that on closer
examination you will feel able to use your discretion to register all of them, unless there are other grounds for objecting to any of them. I say that for reasons:
رہے
- First because this is a group that can be distinguished from any others in the world, since in Hong Kong uniquely