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Ministers) their recent concerns about:
a) passports for wives and widows of ex-servicemen
b) passports for the ethnic minority; and
c) arrangements for registering BDTCs as British Nationals
Overseas (BNOs).
The Secretary of State is familiar with the background to a) and
b); the Home Office are currently considering renewed requests
from Hong Kong for the discretionary grant of citizenship to these two groups. A LegCo delegation is due to visit in June to
lobby Ministers on these issues.
9. On c), Ministers agreed last summer that there should be a
phased scheme for registering BNOS because it would be
impossible, without such scheme, to guarantee that all potential
applicants would be able to register in time. Accordingly, the Hong Kong (British Nationality) (Amendment) Order 1993 will
prescribe cut-off dates (by age group) for the acquisition of BNO status. (It is one of two Orders in Council on nationality
in Hong Kong which the Home Office will table later this month;
the other makes adjustments to the second phase of the Selection Scheme set up under the British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act
1990). LegCo have criticised it on grounds that it unfairly
curtails BDTCs' right to register as BNOS up until 30 June 1997, and that legal sanctions are unnecessary. (All that would be curtailed in practice is the "right" to prevaricate until it was actually too late to be issued with a passport).
10. The Chinese reaction has been helpful. They said in the
JLG in April that Hong Kong "should take the necessary steps to
avoid a heavy concentration of applicants at any particular
time, and should leave sufficient time before 1 July 1997 to
resolve any problems resulting from failure to exchange
passports".
sos.call.PR
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