CONFIDENTIAL
4. Wilson also noted that were the Hong Kong authorities to adopt a less humane attitude to Indochinese refugees, the probabilities are that the US would be prepared to offer more spaces to refugees from Hong Kong. For obvious reasons, this is not something that I have been able to discuss in terms with the State Department, but ased on my discussions over the past few months with Lowman and Cushing, I have the strong impression that the Americans are more than content that Hong Kong should have adopted a humane approach to boat people as the knowledge that refugees may be confident that they will not be towed away or driven off from Hong Kong undoubtedly encourages refugees to head for Hong Kong, thereby taking off some of the pressure from Thailand and Malaysia. In conversation with John Robinson and Rodric Braithwaite on 17 May, Dick Holbrooke, the Assistant Secretary for East Asia, confirmed that because of the heavy losses of life due to sinkings and piracy on other routes, and due to Hong Kong's humane record, the preferred route for refugees now appeared to be along the North Vietnamese and Chinese coasts to Hong Kong.
5. Wilson also drew attention to the cost argument which can be made in favour of moving refugees out of Hong Kong. I have myself tried thi on the State Department, admittedly without the full benefit of the statistics. Cushing agreed that the per diem costs of maintaining a refugee in Hong Kong were indeed much higher than in Malaysia, Thailand or Indonesia. But he went on to suggest that high costs of maintenance in Hong Kong could be slashed if the Hong Kong authorities were to cease keeping the refugees "in expensive sites downtown" and move them to new camps on outlying islands. Indeed why did Hong Kong not set up its own special processing centre on such an island? It would be helpful if Hong Kong could let us have a breakdown of the costs of maintaining refugees in Hong Kong, and supply us with the case for rebutting suggestions of the type made by Cushing, if, as I suspect, these are impractical.
6.
Having said all that, we shall of course continue to do what we can to bring home to the Americans the need to be generous over the allocation of places to Hong Kong. We shall certainly pursue the idea of establishing a regular line into Clark's own office. John Robinson attended the meeting of potential resettlement countries which Clark held on 6 April (my letter of 9 April to Morgan) and on that occasion reminded Clark of the special problems of Hong Kong. We have not neglected the geographical Bureau of the State Department concerned with the refugee problem either; during the conversation with Holbrooke on 17 May referred to above, we again pointed to the difficulty which we had been having in persuading the ASEAN countries not to exclude Hong Kong from the Special Processing Centre, and that our ability to contribute to the SPC would inevitably be affected by the extent that Hong Kong was able to benefit from it. Holbrooke, who had not apparently been aware of this aspect of the problem, readily agreed that our attitude was reasonable (Washington telegram number 1161). We shall also consider whether there is anything to be gained by encouraging the House Sub-Committee on Refugees, chaired by Congresswoman Holtzman, to take a greater interest in Hong Kong, although as Clark told the Governor of Hong Kong the signs are that Congress would like the US to do more for the "land people". It would be helpful if you could
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