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THE HONG KONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.
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SUPPLEMENT No. 3, AUGUST 19, 1949.
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2. In these circumstances and because of the incentive to enter which is presented while unrest prevails in China, the Colony has at this date a population greatly in excess of what it is capable of absorbing.
3. The necessity is therefore presented of providing legislation which would enable action to be taken to expel persons who constitute undesirable elements in the surplus population and as such present serious problems in the maintenance of public order, safety and health within the Colony. The object of this Bill is to provide such legislation.
+. The scheme envisaged by the Bill is that a competent authority after a summary inquiry and recording a finding that an individual is undesirable, may make an order expelling such individual from the Colony, (clause 3) unless he satisfies the competent authority that he is a British subject or that he has been ordinarily resident in the Colony for ten years
or more.
5. The prescribed inquiry will be a summary inquiry following the general lines of the summary procedure employed by a magistrate in the trial of summary offences but with certain modifications. (See clause 5 of the Bill.) The inquiry will be held at any authorized place, an expression which is given a wide interpretation by clause 2 of the Bill. (See the interpretation given to "place of detention" and "accommodation camp".) This is necessitated by the fact that in order to proceed with despatch it will be necessary to collect and detain suspected undesirables in camps or houses of detention. Power to establish camps is given to the Governor in Council by clause 6 and power to detain and remove undesira- bles and suspected undesirables is given to a police officer by clause 7. Further provision for detention and remand pending the prescribed inquiry and pending expulsion pursuant to an order, is made by clause 10.
6. The grounds upon which a competent authority may declare an individual to be undesirable are set out in clause 4. They incorporate the grounds upon which a prospective immigrant can be refused permission to enter under section 11 of the Immigrants Control Ordinance, 1949. But additional grounds are provided for by the last three paragraphs of clause 4.
7. An order of expulsion will be final and conclusive subject to revocation by the Governor. (Clause 11, which is so worded as to enable the Governor to revoke generally when the situation permits.) An order of expulsion, if not revoked, will be valid for five years (clause 8), whether or not the Ordinance continues to be in operation.
8.
A competent authority will be any justice of the peace and any person declared to be such by the Governor. A justice of the peace is, by clause 11, empowered to authorize, by warrant, entry and search of premises upon which there may be undesirables or suspected undesirables.
9. Power to make regulations in relation, inter alia, to the manage- ment of and conduct to be observed in accommodation camps, is given to the Governor in Council by clause 13.
IO. The need for legislation as envisaged by the Bill is, as stated, related to conditions of over population of the Colony. At times when such conditions do not prevail such need would be diminished or disappear. For this reason the Bill (clause 14) gives power by resolution of Legislative Council to suspend the operation of "the Ordinance" and thereafter, as and when necessity to employ "the Ordinance" again occurs, to terminate such suspension.
J. B. GRIFFIN, Attorney General,