TNAG-1419-FCO40-1902-Hong-Kong-Parliamentary-Sub-Committee-on-Race-Relations-and--1985 — Page 190

considerably since the

resettlement Overseas

initial influx in 1979, the

rate at which refugees from Hong Kong were being

accepted for

was falling

sharply. Hong Kong was therefore faced with the

propect of the camp population rising again to the

levels of 1979/80, without any prospect of a

corresponding increase in resettlement. The resultant

situation would rapidly have become unmanageable.

Since a refusal to allow refugee boats to enter Hong

Kong was and i s considered unacceptable for

humanitarian reasons, the closed camp policy was the

most humane measure of deterrence that was available

to the Hong Kong Government. There was strong public

pressure in Hong Kong to introduce

several reasons: similar policies

adopted by other places of asylum in

s ome cases since 1979); Hong Kong already experienced

acute problems as a result of

immigrants from China in recent years and the public

were alarmed at the prospect of Hong Kong giving the

shelter indefinitely to increasing numbers of Vietnamese; they objected to the fact that there was

an

and

such a policy for

had already been

in the

the region (in

the large influx of

"open door" policy towards the Vietnamese while

Chinese illegal immigrants, with whom they had close

cultural, and often family, ties were as a matter of

Government policy repatriated to China (whereas since

late 1979 ethnic Vietnamese, with no cultural or other

links with Hong Kong, have comprised 98 percent of all

arrivals in the territory from Vietnam). They did not

see why the Vietnamese should be given special

treatment, especially since to an increasing extent

their primary motivation for leaving their country,

like that of Chinese immigrants, seemed to be economic

rather than political.