TNAG-1189-FCO40-1491-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-the-British-nationa-1982 — Page 115

SAN

No

1340 | 1 |13) 2/2010

CONFIDENTIAL

RECEIVED IN KERSTRY NO. 24

OREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH SECRETARY

15 MAY.961

GISTRY

J

NATIONALITY BILL

ationality

HKG have Lufimited

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pies PS/LPS

PSYour Lune Ps/Mr Blicker Chief Clerk

Mr Adams

APRD

Legal Adviser

HRGD

.12/5

Thank you for your minute of 4 May (FCS/81/51).

I am afraid that I see insuperable objections to the new clause for which Hong Kong are now pressing. Richard Luce has already made it clear in the Standing Committee that citizens of the British Dependent Territories will be British nationals in the sense that HMG will be entitled to seek to represent their interests on the international plane. But there is no unanimity as to what if any other rights or obligations exist between a state and its nationals. A provision on the lines suggested by Hong Kong - which, as they recognise, would have to embrace British Overseas citizens, British Subjects and British protected persons would cause

would cause enormous confusion and would seriously undermine the Bill's main purpose, which is to split up the existing citizenship of the United Kingdom so as to indicate, roughly, who belongs where. This main aim would be brought very seriously into question if, as the Hong Kong draft proposes, we were to bring all the Bill's statuses under one umbrella. would imply a close link with the United Kingdom far from justified by the facts of the case.

This

It would also raise extremely awkward questions of the duties which we felt we owed to our nationals in the event of an emergency involving their expulsion from their country of residence. The introduction of the new clause would be interpreted as a commitment on our part to all the people concerned and seriously tie our hands if such an emergency arose. We have already been asked during the Bill's passage whether those covered by it are our nationals and if so whether we regard ourselves as obliged to take them all in if required. Such questions are awkward enough to handle already: the proposed new clause would make them almost impossible to deal with. suggest, as Hong Kong have done in the past, that a declaratory provision would do no more than state what everyone knows to be the case shows a complete misunderstanding of the very real difficulties we face in the nationality field.

To

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I do sympathise with your difficulties and those of the Governor. But we have already gone a long way towards meeting the problems with which the Governor is faced by members of UMELCO. In my view there cannot now remain a vestige of a case for their

CONFIDENTIAL

/supposing that they

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