TETNAMESE REFUGEES UK POLICY
Since the Geneva meeting in July the flow of refugees has tapered
but this may partly have been due to the prevailing monsoon conditions. There has been some evidence recently of
cefugees leaving with the connivance of the Vietnamese provincial authorities.
Subject to Parliamentary approval, the first £2.5 million of million allotted by the Government for the relief of refugees in South-East Asia will be given shortly to the United Nations'
High Commissioner for Refugees for his 1979 budget. [The remainder of the £5 million will be available in our next financial year; no decision has yet been taken how to allocate this sum. J
6. Following a visit to Hong Kong by a Home Office selection team, the first immigrants to this country under the 10,000 quota announced before the Geneva meeting, have begun to arrive. Five hundred refugees a month are expected to come here by the end of 1979. The rate afterwards will depend on experience in handling
the first-comers.
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The newspapers have carried reports of refugees here declining take menial jobs and prefering to live off the dole while waiting for something better to tum up. Many of the refugees have middle-class backgrounds and have the ambition to go on to the United States.
ARRANGEMENTS FOR INDO CHINESE REFUGEES
8. The reception and resettlement programme is being coordinated by a Joint Committee on which the voluntary refugee organisations and the Home Office are represented. Refugees spend some 3-6 months in reception centres learning English and preparing for life in Britain before moving into permanent housing. It is the policy of the Government to resettle the refugees widely around the country in small groups of families where housing and job opportunities are available. The Government is reimbursing the voluntary refugee organisations for the necessary additional costs arising from the reception and resettlement programme.
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