XN000022-1995-11-29 — Page 23

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Abolition of first asylum policy will not help repatriation

The Secretary for Security, Mr Peter Lai, today (Wednesday) stressed that the abolition of the policy of first asylum would absolutely not help in any way to accelerate the repatriation of the 21,000 Vietnamese migrants (VMs) in Hong Kong's

camps.

On the contrary, such a move would degrade the territory's humanitarian standing in the international community, and jeopardise its efforts to seek international cooperation to draw this whole chapter to a close, he said.

Speaking in the motion debate on the VM problem in the Legislative Council, Mr Lai said Hong Kong had been a port of first asylum since the outset of the human exodus from Vietnam in 1975.

"This was the price we paid for international cooperation in resolving this problem," he noted.

Mr Lai said the problem now was no longer a massive influx of boat people but a pattern of illegal immigration and people coming to work here illegally.

"Those days of massive arrivals have long gone," he said. "Arrivals since 1992 have fallen to a few hundred a year. In any case, the profile of new arrivals has clearly changed."

Of the some 400 VMs who have arrived so far this year, only 65 put forward a claim for refugee status. And of the new arrivals now in the territory, about half have been here at least once before.

Mr Lai said the answer to that particular problem of illegal immigration lay, not in denying asylum to anyone who reached Hong Kong's shores, but in swift repatriation to Vietnam of those who had no claim to refugee status.

"Bilateral arrangements which would achieve this objective were envisaged by the Fifth CPA (Comprehensive Plan of Action) Steering Committee meeting, which agreed that Vietnamese nationals arriving in the region after February 14, 1994 should be treated in accordance with national legislation and internationally accepted practice.