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Mr Morris
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CONFIDENTIAL
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HONG KONG NATIONALITY QUESTIONS that have to have give public
One agreement in principle to
simultaneous holding of
1155
10/6.
1. We spoke on 4 June about Hong Kong Telegrams 915 and 916 2 dealing with the phased BNO registration programme and the popets. proposals to allow people in Hong Kong either to hold two passports concurrently or to register BNOS and to post date their passports to take effect from 1 July 1997. There was a third possibility which you raised, to issue the passports as the applications come in but keep them in store in the Immigration Department until D Day. I have since seen Miss Barnes-Jones' submission of 3 June, on which we were not consulted, and Mr Goodlad's letter of 4 June.
2. We remain opposed to allowing such a mass of people to hold two passports concurrently for both security and practical reasons. We do not believe that the arguments are sufficiently compelling to overturn the long standing principle that British Nationals are allowed to hold only one British passport at a time. Where exceptions are made, and you and the Governor both referred to them, they are made in a very limited set of circumstances - - eg businessmen travelling to Taiwan and China or to Israel and Arab countries. The possibility of up to 2.5 million people holding two passports is mind boggling. There will be enormous temptation to fraud. The fraudulent passport market is exceedingly lucrative and Hong Kong belongers are already involved. Any proposal to get around the security problem by post dating passports to take effect from 1 July 1997 can hardly be acceptable on practical grounds (and presumably would not meet the terms of our agreement with the Chinese that BNO passports have to be held before the handover). The photographs in such passports would be 14 years old in the latter part of the 10th year of validity. Such a scheme would also make a nonsense of the phased programme of issue for our purposes. The Consulate General would have very few passports to issue in the first 9 years of its life and some 2.5 million in 2007/8. A staff of some 1,300 would be required at a cost of about £14 million. We will have a situation far worse than the one which we are all presently trying strenuously to avoid and which will have serious implications for the decisions which have to be taken urgently on the Consulate General building.
3. Putting issued passports in store will have several of the same disadvantages including the legal problem. Who on
HKD 396
396/1
14 JUN 1993
/30 June
CODE 18-77
CONFIDENTIAL
Page 60Page 61