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10)
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GVV 341/393/1
Mr Clift HK&GD
AKK 345li
RECEIVED IN REGISTRY NO. 51 13 MAR 1980
DECK ·FICER
INDEX
PA
Mo
713.3
REGISTRY Action Take.
VISAS FOR HONG KONG FOR CHINESE PROVINCIAL
Multamson
have agrow to
write to thr bridge.
ICIALS
iniam
Iwill
see
18
13.3
L. Perhaps Mr Bridges had rather more on his mind than Peking telegram no 10 to Hong Kong, whose Immigration Department may feel they are beginning to come under too much pressure from us.
2. Since the beginning of this year, they have agreed to relieve Bangkok and Singapore of actual and potential difficulties with Taiwanese transit visa applications by accepting the doctrine that these should be obtained (ie by direct application to Hong Kong) before the applicant leaves Taiwan. Secondly, FED have recently asked Hong Kong if there are ways in which the handling of Taiwanese applications for UK visas can be speeded up. Thirdly, Peking are corresponding with Hong Kong about reducing the burden of Chinese transit visa applications. Fourthly, Peking telegram no 10 has been interpreted, in part at least, as a plea to help ease the pressure on the Embassy.
3. I can thus appreciate the Immigration Department's broad concern but would nevertheless have hoped that they would have co-operated in this instance. After all, it is the Chinese, not the Embassy, who are making the proposal. If there were sufficient reason for Hong Kong to respond helpfully to the Chinese, I would regard any benefit to Peking as coincidental and certainly not as an undermining of the basic principle that Hong Kong and we take in each other's visa washing.
4.
Whilst the FCO have no intention, so far as I am aware, of making economies in our Visa Sections in the area, it is certainly true that PPD/POD would have enormous difficulties in meeting requirements for additional staff to cope with increased visa work, either on our own or on Hong Kong's behalf, anywhere in the world.
4. I am copying these minutes to PPD. They are aware of our view that to try running a visa system on a shoestring invites extra work and political repercussions. It ought also to be recorded that, as China opens up its contacts with the West, the pressure of visa applications on Peking (which is already tightly stretched), may sooner or later give rise to a request for extra staff. Certainly we cannot expect the Hong Kong Immigration Department to bail us out in any way; no more than, in the wider context of world-wide demand for UK visas, the Home Office will allow us to lower our standards of visa-application-scrutiny because we say we cannot find the staff to do the job properly.
10 March 1980
Cc:
Mr Williamson
Mr D C Walker
―
HK&GD
PPD
with encs
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