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19 April 1993
Charles Wardle MP
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Home Office
London
SW1H 9AT
HKD 340/6
RF
20 1993
Foreign & Commonwealth
Office
45
London SWIA 2AH
Dear Chattes
From The Minister of State
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ethnic minorities
2015 DIST.
As you know, the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed a motion on 10 March calling for the Hong Kong Government to make representations to the British Government for the grant of full British citizenship to the non-Chinese ethnic minorities in Hong Kong. I enclose a record of the debate.
This is a subject which has rumbled on for some time; there was a similar debate in the Legislative Council (Legco) last November; both you and I received Legislative Councillors in January who raised this matter (3 of them also called on Douglas Hurd on 28 January). In the latest debate, Hong Kong Government officials repeated the reasons why the British Government felt that the case was being overstated and confirmed that the British Government had looked again at the case of the ethnic minority following the November debate but could not support it.
It was evident during the LegCo debate that there are strong and widely-held feelings there that we should change our position on this group of people. The Hong Kong Government's representatives undertook to convey to us the case for giving more sympathetic consideration to this group. I believe that in response we need to show that we have reflected on the points made in the LegCo debate, and to state our conclusion clearly.
I would accordingly be grateful if you would write to me to confirm the position of the Home Office on the matter of granting full British citizenship to this group. I would then propose to write to the Chief Secretary to respond formally to the representations made to the Foreign Secretary by the Hong Kong Government at Legco's request. I am planning my next visit to Hong Kong at the end of May and it would be extremely helpful if I were able to write well in advance of that: I would hope thereby to prevent this from becoming too much of an issue during my visit.
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ALASTAIR GOODLAD
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