13
Pe place on file
Wednesday, July 21, 1971
POWERS TO REFUSE ENTRY INTO HONG KONG
Will Not Be Used Arbitrarily
********
The Acting Attorney-General, the Hon. G.R. Sneath gave an assurance
today that the power to refuse entry into Hong Kong would not be exercised
arbitrarily at the whim of Immigration officers on the spot.
Introducing the Immigration Bill 1971 in the Legislative Council,
Mr. Sneath said the Bill, by consolidating the three existing ordinances
into one, recognised that the law on immigration and the law on deportation
was really dealing with one and the same subject.
"From the individual's point of view it is simply whether he has
the right to come into Hong Kong and thereafter to be allowed to stay here
as long as he chooses," he said.
"From Hong Kong's point of view it is the right we should have to
keep out those whom Hong Kong does not wish to have, or cannot afford to
have, and to send on their way those who do not belong to Hong Kong, and
whom we would not again admit if they came knocking at the door.
!!
For the purpose of the proposed code of immigration law, Mr.
Sneath said, everybody was either a "Hong Kong belonger" or an immigrant.
The class of people who can be classified as "belongers" however had been
enlarged.
In addition to persons born in Hong Kong, it now included persons
who, in Hong Kong, had become naturalised British subjects and the wives
/and
30.7.71-
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