TNAG-1274-FCO40-1624-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 103

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The Editor

'Refuge'

c/o Refugee Documentation Project

York University

4700 Keele Street

CANADA

Downsview, Ontario

Dear Sir

2 4 NOV 1983

DESK OFFICER

Your referen&DEX

PA

REGISTRY Action Taken

Our referesse

November 1989

Date

A review of my work on South East Asian refugees which appeared in 'Refuge' (Vol.3, No.1) though rightly pointing to some of the serious difficulties faced by the refugees in Britain contains several factual errors and some serious misinterpretations of the British refugee programme. Since the review will, for many Canadians, be the only insight they have of the British refugee situation I would be grateful for an opportunity to correct some of the false impressions which it might create.

The review appears to voice some scepticism over the assertion that the Vietnamese refugees in Britain did not have a large established ethnic community which would provide support (as did, for example, the Ugandan Asians). The Chinese community in Britain numbers only 90,000 and is, with a few exceptions, very spatially dispersed.

It is an error to suggest that in Britain refugees 'were not kept in reception centres until they had mastered a basic understanding of the language but were resettled where and when housing became available'. A fundamental aspect of Britain's reception centre policy was the provision of a basic grounding in English. For this reason a minimum period of 3 months was established for refugee stays in these centres (though the average stay was 6 months) and a target of 20+ hours language tuition per week was set. Thus, the reception centre policy did not of itself result in 'a second resettlement without adequate linguistic tools'. Though the resettled refugees do have a poor level of English proficiency, this is more a consequence of the time available to learn (less than 18 months for most refugees in the sample) and the inadequacy of ESL provision during resettlement than of the reception policy.

Inaccuracies concerning ESL emerge again with the assertion that 'a sizable majority of the refugees have regressed in English proficiency since reception'. The actual proportion reported in the publication is 7 per cent. A further error concerns employment rates, the 18 per cent in the 20-29 age group reported as unemployed in the review actually being the proportion who are employed.

The review stated that Canada has a 'two-track system of strong federal and provincial support complemented by strong commitments of local support'. This contracts markedly with Britain where there are virtually no local or central government staff involved in the organisation and running of the refugee programme. Given such disparities, comparisons of staffing levels in the non-government sector alone are dangerously misleading. Furthermore, the inaccuracy of such comparisons is

1.