TNAG-1091-FCO40-1341-Legal-immigration-from-China-and-Vietnam-into-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 57

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CONFIDENTIAL

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3.

Before Operation Champion Chinese officials indicated that this was a matter for Hong Kong and said that if visitors overstayed this was our fault since we encouraged them by issuing identity cards. They implied then that they would accept overstayers returned by Hong Kong. Since Operation Champion Chinnese officials have been more non-committal on this subject.

There is

some evidence to suggest that they might not now be as forth-coming about a system of limiting the stay of visitors as they had earlier implied. A front page Da Gong Bao article in November 1980 was highly critical of a speech by the Deputy Director of Immigration which had been read as suggesting that Hong Kong was going to impose a quota or limit the stay of "visitors".

13:

In theory the Chinese could hardly object the return of those who had overstayed the validity of two-way travel documents issued by them. But they would be likely to argue strongly that the period of such visits was for them and not Hong Kong to determine. There is also a substantial risk that, if we started returning overstayers, they would lengthen the period for visits, or increase the percentage of one-way visits, to meet the pressure they are under for greater freedom to travel to, and settle in, Hong Kong.

Courses open to us

14.

These are :

(a) to accept the present situation i.e. to go on allowing 150

entrants a day but no more, to enter and remain;

(b)

(i)

(c)

(ii)}

(iii)

(iv)

(v)

or

to inform the Chinese that those of the 150 holding visitors permits will be treated like visitors from any other country and seek assurances that they will not increase the issue of single journey permits;

to announce this publicly, to have effect from a given date;

เ

to cease to grant extensions of stay to two-way permit holders;

no longer to issue identity cards to two-way permit holders; and

to seek out and return two-way permit holders who overstay, (c.f. illegal immigrant "evaders"); Or

to impose physical controls at Lo Wu and admit some lesser number of entrants from China.

Argument

15. (a) produces an artificial expansion of the population and adds signifi- cantly to the task of providing reasonable social services for the indigenous residents. On the other hand, the inflow is steady and foreseeable and most of the immigrants are more stable, skilled and law abiding than the average illegal immigrant. Most of them also have close connections here and attempts to expel them could lead to a possible outcry (as occurred on a limited scale in the aftermath of Champion). Immigration Department can cope with this rate of inflow. The very existence of this arrangement enables us to avoid introducing a family reunification programme.

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