CONFIDENTIAL
HKK341
RECOVEC
- / CPR 950
97
NO. 51
58
Mr Murray
Mr Cortage 3/i√
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM CHINA
INDEX
no
119.4
१.५
1. You will have seen Peking telegram No 29 to Hong Kong (copy attached) reporting that the Governor spoke to Assistant Foreign Minister Song Zhiguang in Peking about "the large number of illegal immigrants apprehended attempting to enter the Colony by boat from
the east on 28 March".
2. Over the last week or so the daily average of illegal immigrants arrested has been around 200. This compares with a daily average of about 100 in February this year and 23 over the whole of 1978. On 30 March the Acting Political Adviser telephoned the department to say that some 1,000 illegal immigrants had been arrested in the preceding 24 hours, the majority of them in small boats in the Mirs Bay area in the north-east of the New Territories. Those caught were being detained at various police premises in the New Territories; the police and the Navy were very stretched. 3. We learned this morning that 2,000 illegal immigrants were successfully returned to China on 30 and 31 March. In the meantime the number of arrests has declined sharply: no more than 100 illegal immigrants were caught in the border areas on 1 April.
4.
The cause of the sudden increase is not clear. The Hong Kong Government's recent decision not to issue further entry permits to people in China (because of the present very high level of legal and illegal immigration) may have something to do with it.
Bad
weather may also have made it easier for the would-be illegal immigrants to evade patrols on the Chinese side.
5. We have been promised further details and comment by telegram
2 April 1979
cc PS/Lord Goronwy-Roberts
R J T McLaren
Hong Kong and General Department
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