TNAG-1424-FCO40-1907-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 215

Laos

Hanoi

Hong Kong Macau 12821

749

Hainan

Thailand 5401

Da Nang

Cambodia

Philippines 2326

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh

Malaysia 9427

Singapore 565

As the figures show, Hong Kong now has a larger population of boat people than elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Overcrowded Hong Kong relies on the world's countries to take their share.

Still A Favourite Port of Refuge

In 1980, 37,468 boat people from Hong Kong were resettled abroad. Only 2,747 left in the first ten months of 1984. The United States, the major resettlement country, will now accept about 20% of new arrivals. Will the others languish for years in closed centres?

They seek a better life

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Risking death in their flimsy boats, the Vietnamese refugees have flooded into Hong Kong up to October 1984, over 109,000 of them seeking a better life in the West. Hong Kong now holds more than 30% of all boat people in Southeast Asia. Resettlement, initially, was brisk but over the past year it has almost dried up and the refugee centres are overflowing.

Cost too high for tiny Hong Kong

With five million people, Hong Kong is already one of the world's most over- crowded spots with a population density twenty times that of the U.K. and over two hundred times that of the U.S. This intense population pressure is exacerbated by immigration from China over half a million immigrants in the past five years. Illegal immigrants are sent back when they are apprehend- ed. But this is not possible in the case of boat people from Vietnam. Until July 1982, Vietnamese refugees were housed in open centres and allowed out to work each day. This favoured treatment was increasingly difficult to justify and on July 2, 1982, Hong Kong introduced closed centres.