TNAG-1275-FCO40-1625-Resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-1983 — Page 132

布政司署

香港下亞

畢道

RESTRICTED

** OUR Ref.:

(53) in SCR 12/4821/79

* YOUR Ref.:

R.J.F. Hoare Esq.,

Hong Kong & General Department, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London SW1A 2AH.

Dra Richard

PA on resollement VR

* Security Branch

the

TAS14

GOVERNMENT SECRETARIAT

LOWER ALBERT ROAD "HONGKONG?

MKK 243/2

VECEIVED IN MEDISTPY NO. 51 12 APR 1983

Vietnamese Refugees

1

Ar

13/4183

46

24 March 1983

Thanks for your letter of 11 March 1983 to Patrick Williamson - Patrick is busy recruiting Administrative Officers, and I am looking after the shop in his absence.

2.

-

We knew that David Wheen would be in London in early March, primarily to examine a possible computer system for the Australian High Commission. He is well-briefed on refugee issues, as he apparently covers these and immigration matters for Canberra for the whole of South East and East Asia. By coincidence, David Jeaffreson had taken the Australian Commissioner, Donald Horne, and a small party including Wheen, to visit the Chi Ma Wan and Kai Tak Refugee Centres a week before. So far Wheen's estimate of an Australian offtake from here of 700 this year looks like materialising the rate is now running at about 60 a month. This will be an increase on their 1981 (500) and 1982 (414) figures, and we are keeping up discreet but persistent pressure. It is interesting to hear that the Australians, like the Americans, also do not regard many of our Vietnamese arrivals as "refugees". Recent Australian figures confirm this: of the 176 Vietnamese they have taken from Hong Kong camps in 1983, a grand total of 2 have come from closed centres! So we are not alone in regarding our newer arrivals as predominantly economic migrants rather than political refugees.

3.

Thank you for your efforts to lobby the Australians nevertheless. Keep up the pressure!

ལོ་པ།།

Yum

Kran

(A.K. Mason)

RESTRICTED