CO537-4999 — Page 249

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16.

The consequences to trade of immigration control on the lines indicated above would not follow overnight the announcement of control. Some, like the effect on remittances from overseas, would follow very quickly; others, like the driving away of junks and small carriers would manifest themselves more slowly. What it has been attempted to show is rather the tendencies that would be set in motion by a declaration that henceforth we intended to identify and pass judgment upon all those who wished to cross our frontiers. The view which this note has endeavoured to argue is that these tendencies strike directly at the most sensitive and essential feature of our peculiar trading system. The Colony grew into an imperial trade base precisely because there was no control. If controlled immigration had been a practical alternative it would have been imposed very early in this century. For over thirty years the possibility of effective planning for education, social services and amenities, and even elementary necessities like water, has been denied to the civil government by their refusal to exercise their right to control entry. Our predecessors planned far ahead for a city of a million people: our services, our housing, our amenities and our reservoirs were built to meet that figure. We have watched the wreck of these plans without lifting a hand to restrict the population to its planned limit, not because we had any fondness for overcrowding but because we could not argue against the fact that if you stop movement of people you stop trade: and we have nothing else to offer the world except trade.

17.

It is perhaps worth noting that other areas economically tied to their neighbours have chosen to be equally realistic. The Franco-Belgian border near Lille can be crossed in either direction without very much fuss about identity papers or passports: this is so because the factories of the Lille area need the workers from across the border without whom they could not operate. In the face of that hard fact, restrictions and control at the frontier tended to melt away. So with Hong Kong. We need free entry and egress for traders and carriers to maintain our role of imperial trade base. If our primary role is to be a fortress then assuredly we must impose restrictions : but we must be quite clear what will happen if we do. This note indicates some of the tendencies which will be set in motion by laying restraining hands on the free ebb and flow of the human tide whose busyness has created and now maintains this port's position. The result will be progressive diminution in the volume of our trade accompanied of course by a progressive diminution in our revenue.

We are spending at full stretch now. Someone will have a very large deficit to meet and a decision to impose restrictions on movement can only be taken looking squarely at that fact.

18.

This paper is not concerned with the effectiveness of control, which would be small: or with its cost, which would bo

large.

26.4.49