TNAG-1424-FCO40-1907-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 31

#

CONFIDENTIAL

Vietnam will contribute to this

poor state of our relations with

difficulty. Finally a decision to treat some boat people as

economic migrants rather than refugees would be a break with the

unwritten understanding reached at the 1979 conference that all

boat-people should be treated as refugees (however in practice it is

clear that several other

governments concerned have already

concluded that many of

of the people

people concerned are economic migrants

rather than refugees).

19. On 15 January 1985, the Hong Kong Executive Council agreed that

the Hong Kong Government should pursue the possibility of

repatriating all new arrivals who were found not to be refugees,

provided they would not be treated inhumanely. They advised that as

a first step HMG's agreement should be sought to HMA Hanoi

discussing the matter with the Vietnamese authorities.

(c) Screening of New Arrivals

20.

UNHCR

observer.

Recognising that repatriation is unlikely to be feasible in the

short term, the Hong Kong Government has recently examined the

possibility of introducing now a scheme to screen out "economic

migrants" from genuine refugees, against the day when repatriation

of the former might be possible. Screening would be done by an

independent tribunal

in the presence of a

Those

identified as refugees would be placed in closed centres pending

resettlement.

Economic migrants would be detained as illegal

Alternatively, all would be detained initially as

illegal immigrants, leaving UNHCR to

to advise the Hong Kong Government

that particular cases should be given refugee status and transferred

to closed centres.

immigrants.

21. The advantages of this scheme would be:

(a) It might deter some economic migrants from coming to Hong Kong;

(b) it would be in line with Hong Kong's treatment of undocumented

migrants from other countries, including China;

(c) those granted refugee status would have a reasonable prospect of

resettlement in the West.

22.

The disadvantages would be:

(a) If arrivals nevertheless continued, Hong Kong would find itself

CONFIDENTIAL