Line to take
Four-fifths of the Principal Beneficiary places will have been
allocated by the end of 1993, 3 years before the transfer of
sovereignty. The rest will have been done before the end of
1995. There is a considerable amount of work involved in giving
effect to the Scheme and to comply even with this time scale
requires the use of very significant manpower resources in the
Hong Kong Immigration Department. We think that a reasonable
balance has been struck between the need to implement the Scheme
with all due expedition and the need to see that the task is
performed with due regard to sensible use of resources.
There
is also a balance to be struck between completing registrations
as early as possible and leaving some places for those unlikely
to qualify until nearer the time of the hand over.
Numbers benefitting from the Scheme
She has "point.
a
Ms Lau has noted that the family size of those Principal
Beneficiaries registered so far is 1.8 compared with the original
estimate of 3.5. If this were to apply to the remaining
Principal Beneficiaries it would mean that about 138,000 people
in total would acquire British citizenship under the Scheme,
compared with the "expected" number of 225,000. She claims that
Hong Kong is being short-changed by the British Government.
This "multiplier" point has been raised before both publicly and
lie privately. Hong Kong have always maintained that the British/Home Office
estimates were excessive.