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Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London SW1A 2AH
(7
pa 243/45 C
S Hope Esq 445 Bury Road ROCHDALE Lancashire
OL11 5EU
Telephone 01- 233 3988
Your reference
Our reference
Date
30 January 1985
Dear Mr Hope
16
Thank you for your letter of 3 December to the Prime Minister about the Vietnamese refugees who are in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement. I have been asked to reply.
More than half a million people have left Vietnam by boat since 1975 and of these over 100,000 have arrived in Hong Kong. Although it is one of the most densely populated places in the world, Hong Kong has turned none away: all have been given temporary asylum pending resettlement. Hong Kong has also accepted 14,000 displaced Indo-Chinese for permanent settlement.
For the first few years the rate of resettlement from the refugee centres in Hong Kong was satisfactory but by 1982 it had fallen considerably while large numbers of boat people continued to arrive. As a result the number in Hong Kong awaiting resettlement began to rise and the prospects for those already in Hong Kong grew worse.
Against this background, the Hong Kong Government introduced in July 1982 a policy of placing newly arriving refugees in closed centres, from which they are not permitted to seek outside employment. This step was taken with great reluctance, but it was considered essential to try to deter people from setting out from Vietnam for Hong Kong. The arrival rate has since slowed but a flow nevertheless continues. Until it dries up and until the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is able to resettle the 12,000 refugees who are now there, the Hong Kong Government can see no alternative but to continue the policy of closed centres. The centres are run in cooperation with UNHCR who help to fund them.
We are making every effort, in cooperation with the UNHCR and other countries, to seek permanent solutions for the refugees who are still in Hong Kong. Britain has accepted over 18,000 Vietnamese refugees, most of them from Hong Kong, for permanent settlement. We continue to admit close relatives of Vietnamese
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