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Immigration and Tourism
事入
旅務境
遊和
A TOTAL OF 19.1 million people passed through immigration control points as they entered or left Hong Kong during 1979. This was 41 per cent more than in 1978. The bulk of the increase was border traffic between Hong Kong and China, but Hong Kong International Airport and the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal also showed substantial increases over the previous year. Local residents accounted for 68 per cent of all travellers; the remainder were mostly short-term tourists or business visitors.
Immigration
The Immigration Department has a staff of 2,485, of whom 1,138 are members of the Immigration Service. The work of the department falls into two main streams - controlling people moving in and out of Hong Kong, and providing travel documents and registration facilities for local residents.
Immigration Control
The events of 1979 which had the most dramatic impact on immigration control were the big increases in the numbers of Vietnamese refugees arriving in Hong Kong and the high level of immigration (both legal and illegal) from China. The influx of tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees and Chinese immigrants imposed great strains on the Immigration Department, and many officers were deployed to deal with the extra workload. Additional staff were recruited but there were inevitable delays while new recruits received com- prehensive training. This meant that the department's staff worked under a great deal of pressure for the entire year.
There was a considerable increase in travel to and from China. Hong Kong residents paid more than two million visits there. During the year, through train services from Hung Hom railway station in Kowloon to Guangzhou (Canton), as well as regular air services, were introduced. The hovercraft services from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, introduced in 1978, continued to be well patronised. In spite of these alternative routes to China, the immigration control point at Lo Wu railway station continued to be very busy throughout the year and it became apparent that the facilities there need to be substantially extended. Other links between Hong Kong and China are likely to be developed in the future.
Cases of travellers using forged or falsified travel documents increased during the year, both at the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry Terminal and at Hong Kong International Airport. These included attempts to enter Hong Kong illegally as well as attempts by Hong Kong residents to travel to other countries on forged papers. Officers of the Investigation Division of the Immigration Department arrested a number of the organisers of these rackets. Every effort is being made to detect and prevent the use of bogus documents and