TNAG-1419-FCO40-1902-Hong-Kong-Parliamentary-Sub-Committee-on-Race-Relations-and--1985 — Page 144

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(a)

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the commitment

prepared to

is we aker ("HVG are

resettle" has been altered to

in principle

"are

prepared to consider accepting");

D

(b) it is less specific on which

accepted, making no mention of

cases (although this

is

refugees might be

the hard-to-resettle

not necessarily a

disadvantage: it would be better if the Home Office

took a few easy to resettle refugees than по

hard-to-resettle cases);

(c) the

6.

commitment, such as it is, is less continuing

than we proposed (the re i s now reference to "a

decision", implying a single action).

While this is disappointing, it i s in no way

unexpected. The Home Office have at least moved from the position which they maintained for several months

that they would not even consider

even consider accepting any refugees

other than the family reunion cases.

whether ог

7. The Home

Home Office formula was sent to Hong Kong with

the caveat that FCO Ministers had taken по decision on

not to accept it. On this basis the Governor

put it to EXCO On 27 August with the request that EXCO

now respond to recommendation 5(iv) (which proposes that

Hong Kong accept for settlement a proportion of the ethnic Chinese refugees from open camps). EXCO did not

object to the 5(iii) formula, but predictably offered a

matching (and thus

thus similarly disappointing) response

5(iv).

to

task of

Vietname se

8. The disappointing Home Office formula for responding

to recommendation 5(iii) will make our

persuading other countries to accept more

refugees from Hong Kong extremely

extremely difficult.

But the

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