experience has shown that most of the people, on whose behalf we have had to give guarantees, have in fact been satisfactorily resettled in other countries (mainly in the USA) without having to be brought
to the UK.
The
In January this year, when Hong Kong had 500 "boat refugees" on its hands, the Hong Kong authorities asked whether we might be able to take some. Your Department agreed, and 61 refugees will be arriving in the United Kingdom this month and next. The problem has, however, escalated during the year and particularly in recent weeks. Hong Kong's facilities for coping are now almost intolerably over-stretched. Colony has nearly 4,000 "boat refugees" who have little hope of early resettlement. But Hong Kong is also having to absorb a very large num- ber of immigrants from China. Legal immigrants are currently arriving at an average of over 180 a day (more than 3 times the rate in 1976), while we believe illegal immigrants are entering at a rate of something like 2400 a month (6 times the estimate 2 years ago). This problem which we have taken up with the Chinese, but so far without significant effect is naturally the first priority for the Hong Kong government. So the stage is being reached where the authorities wil have either to insist on acceptance guarantees from third countries before admit- ting "boat refugees" or, worse still, to refuse permission for any more refugees to land. I naturally wish to avoid this. I also wish to avoid a situation where we might need to mount an emergency operation to relieve Hong Kong of some of its refugee burden.
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The UNHCR has worked wonders in arranging resettlement for thousands of "boat refugees": 25,000 were successfully resettled during 1977 alone. Most went to the USA, Australia, France and Canada and only about 260 to the UK. I should like to approach other governments to seek their help over the resettlement of refugees from Hong Kong. But such approaches might be misunderstood unles I could show that we were ourselves making a greater effort to place refugees here. The Canadians Tor example, have just announced that they will increase their intake of Indo-Chinese Trefugees from 50 to 70 families a month with immediate effect We should be showing a similar flexibility.
We would
Would it be possible for you to agree to an additional commit ment to accept into the UK over, say, a year, 500 or 600 more? expect the majority of these to come from Hong Kong with, perhaps, fifty each from Malaysia and Thailand where the problem is also grave I understand there is a genuine willingness on the part of British voluntary agencies concerned to help resettle more Vietnamese "boat refugees" here.
I should be most grateful if you would consider this urgently.
Mr Brynmor John MP
Home Office
Queen Anne's Gate
London SW1
Your Ear
Fromey
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