મિ છે.
UN
HKD 34816
10 JUN 1993
JISTRY
un Takon
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
65
BY FAX
8 June 1993
Mrs Elsie Tu
Chairman
Legislative Council House Committee Legislative Council Building
8 Jackson Road Central
Hong Kong
Dew thric
London SWIA 2AH
From The Minister of State
pathar minutes.
吃了
ths B.J
Pala
I am writing to you in response to your letters of 28 May to me and to Douglas Hurd, about the position after 30 June 1997 of those non-Chinese Hong Kong residents who have solely British nationality. (I am writing to you separately on the subject of UK citizens with children born before 1 January 1983).
As I told the Members of LegCo when we met on 1 June, I am well aware of the concern in Hong Kong about the position of the ethnic minority community after 1997, to which you refer in your letter. I am of course familiar with the motion passed by LegCo in March of this year, which was transmitted formally to us by the Hong Kong Government for consideration by HMG. As I said, the Home Office are indeed reconsidering this issue in the light of the LegCo motion and of further
Before representations from your Nationality Sub-Committee. responding formally, Home Office Ministers will naturally want to consider anything further your House Committee Delegation may wish to add, when they call on us later this week.
I would prefer not to anticipate the Government's response at this stage. But, for the record, I should perhaps correct a couple of misunderstandings which I encountered in several of my contacts in Hong Kong last week, and which recur in your letter. First, no members of the ethnic minority will be made stateless in 1997; the Hong Kong Act 1985 ensures, in accordance with our international obligations, that this will not happen. Second, British National (Overseas) status, like the British Dependent Territories citizenship it will replace, is a legal nationality status (which confers, amongst other benefits, the right to British consular protection on its holders), it is not merely a "travel document" as you assert in your letter.
I am copying this letter to Charles Wardle in the Home Office.
ex,
انستكملا
ALASTAIR GOODLAD
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