Our reference: IMG 82 58/1026/14 Your reference:
K F X Burns Esq
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Mr Legow.
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24 August 1982
Dear Burns вития
The Hong
Thank you for sending a copy of your note of 16 August about the UNHCR's request for a further United Kingdom quota of Vietnamese refugees. I think a meeting is highly desirable, and the sooner the better. Kong authorities are virtually certain to raise the question of an additional quota with the Prime Minister when she visits Hong Kong on 26 28 September and we will have to provide briefing agreed between our Departments and cleared as necessary with Ministers. I shall be on leave from 18 September
to 10 October but if a meeting cannot be arranged before 18 September, Mr Spence can attend in my place.
I should like however to set my preliminary views on record at this stage. The note from No. 10 of 14 May 1981 in response to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary's minute of 12 May is quite clear that there can be no question of accepting an increase in the quota. Since that date, the Polish refugee question has arisen and on 2 August 1982 No. 10 had further comments to make on the subject of our various commitments to refugees. We have also recently been facing a Parliamentary lobby on the question of Iranians (there are about 25,000 in the United Kingdom) and the impossibility of their return to their own country.
Judging from letters received in this Department, the boat people no longer enjoy the sympathy of the population of this country and we are having increasing difficulty in justifying admissions for family reunion. We have authorised visas for 4,600 Vietnamese for reunion and 2,600 of these have still to come here. We are also obligated to continue agreeing to the entry of the spouse and minor children of these refugees already here and we neither know how many will eventually qualify for this nor can we place a ceiling on it. Rescues by United Kingdom registered ships not only mean a further commitment to accept Vietnamese but they also produce a continuing source for family reunions. In these circumstances I can see no prospect of our relaxing the family reunion criteria as suggested by UNHCR.
As regards Hong Kong's argument over the question of sea rescues by ships registered in Hong Kong (Segar's letter of 2 August to Spence refers), all 10,000 of the 1979 United Kingdom quota was taken from Hong Kong as a measure of relief to that colony. The refugees rescued in 1981 by the United Kingdom
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