TNAG-1423-FCO40-1906-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 128

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10. Resettlement quotas for all Indo-Chinese refugees have declined

recent years. Hong Kong has been particularly affected by this

Reasons for the decline appear to include:

decline.

(a)

Compassion Fatigue"

Nearly 10 years after the fall of Saigon, the Indo-Chinese refugee

problem is perceived as less pressing than it was and has been

overtaken by other refugee crises, eg Iran, Afghanistan, and

Ethiopia.

(b) Domestic considerations of resettlement countries

Many resettlement countries are reluctant to accept large quotas of

refugees because they already face high unemployment, and are

concerned about the strain that large numbers of unemployed refugees

might place on welfare services. The UK has had one of the least

satisfactory experiences in this respect: 80% of the adult (male?)

Vietnamese resettled here are unemployed.

(c) Reluctance to accept "non-refugees"

The Americans in particular support the view that the majority of

the refugees now arriving in Hong Kong are economic migrants. Since

mid-1982 (when statistics were first made available to the Hong Kong

Government by the US Government) about 50% of those selected by the

US Consulate in Hong Kong as eligible for admission under the US

Refugee Programme have subsequently been rejected by the Immigration

and Naturalisation Service (INS) on the grounds that they are not

refugees. (Very recently however there have been signs that the INS

are now accepting a higher proportion.)

(a) View that UK should take the lead in resettling refugees from

Hong Kong

decline

The main reason why Hong Kong has been more affected by the

in resettlement offers than other places of first asylum appears to

be simply that other countries consider that the UK, as the

metropolitan power, should take the lead in accepting a further

quota from Hong Kong. Evidence of this is set out in the attached

extract from the Memorandum which we submitted in October 1984 to

SCORRI, and explicitly in the US and Australia submissions to

SCORRI.

Further similar remarks were made by US, Australian and

CONFIDENTIAL