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priority to resettlement
from Hong Kong. Miss Pearce said this might increase the number of people who would risk leaving Vietnam by sea, because they would no longer have any hope of leaving under the ODP. Dr Barber said it was difficult to predict what effect such a policy would have on numbers. Current ODP criteria were as strict as those currently being used for family reunion from Hong Kong. In his view, the ODP was really an immigration programme based on the Home Office's immigration criteria, and should not be regarded as a refugee programme. The numbers now coming here under the ODP were falling, because of the tighter criteria now being applied, and because the backlog of people in Vietnam with visas issued under the old criteria was now reducing. In addition the UK's participation in the RASRO ship rescue scheme would reduce its commitment to take large numbers of ship rescue cases and would confine those we did take to refugees with UK links who were easier
to resettle.
>
9.
Dr Barber continued that the BRC no longer believed that 80% of the Vietnamese here were unemployed.
The numbers claiming supplementary benefit were misleading. Many adult Vietnamese with large families had no incentive to take jobs for which they were qualified because they could get nearly as much money from the DHSS. A social worker from one of the agencies working with the BRC had observed that any Vietnamese refugee in London who wanted a job could find one.
"
differentiate
10. Miss Pearce raised the question of UK aid to Vietnam. However much we deplored the military aspirations of the Vietnamese regime there was a humanitarian problem.
At present we were telling refugees that we disapproved of their government, yet we were refusing to help them. Could the Government not between humanitarian and military aspects of the Vietnamese situation? A slightly less hardline attitude would, enable voluntary agencies to operate within Vietnam. have the effect of beginning to stem the outflow of refugees. Barber drew a parallel with the Ethiopian situation. The current about new contact between the West and the
famine had brought
Government,
despite
our
disagreement
for example, This might
Dr
with the latter's
Ethiopian
policies.
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