TNAG-1425-FCO40-1908-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1985 — Page 164

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Miss Thi Minh Bui

9 MAY 1985

[Mr. David Waddington]

for the admission of relatives of those Vietnamese already accepted for settlement, and those new criteria meant in effect that people could come if they would have qualified to do so as dependants under the immigration rules.

That is the position today. We look carefully at all applications on an individual basis, but, unless there are exceptional circumstances, we apply what might be thought the not unreasonable and not unfair policy of admitting spouses and minor children and parents who can show the degree of dependency required under the immigration rules.

Now I come to the case of Miss Bui. She came here, it seems, in 1981. She is not alone in this country. She lives in a council flat with her sister and a cousin. But in a closed camp in Hong Kong are her parents, her three brothers and a young sister. She has applied twice through the British Refugee Council for those relatives to come here, but clearly they do not qualify under the criteria that I have mentioned.

Miss Bui's three brothers and her sister are certainly not dependants under the immigration rules, and her parents, both of whom are under 65, would also not be admitted if Miss Bui were an ordinary immigrant. They are not wholly or mainly dependent on Miss Bui and her sister, and it is doubtful whether, if they were to arrive in this country, Miss Bui and her sister would be able to support and accommodate them. I need not remind the House of the sensible maintenance and accommodation provisions which for long have been in the immigration rules.

I have every sympathy with Miss Bui's wish to be reunited with her relatives, but, as I have said, the difficulty is that they clearly do not come within the present criteria. However, there have been two developments since I last wrote to the hon. Member for Hammersmith about the case, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman now that as a result my mind is not closed on this case.

The first development to which I am referring is the recent report of the Select Committee of which the hon. Gentleman spoke. I heard him on the radio this morning making the point, which he repeated this evening, that if we were to take, as he put it, a percentage of people from the camps, the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany and France would take significant numbers also. Many of those countries have already taken refugees from Hong Kong and I am sure that the House will be delighted to hear that the Canadian Government have recently decided that this year, as part of their annual refugee programme, they

Miss Thi Minh Bui

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'will be taking 500 refugees from Hong Kong in addition. to the 600 which they had already agreed to take. That means that this year they will take the same number as they took last year.

But no country has yet declared that a special gesture by this country would persuade them to take extra numbers to clear the camps. That must be borne in mind.

It must be remembered that other countries already have commitments to take Vietnamese refugees from other parts of the world apart from Hong Kong. The obvious example is Thailand.

However, the Select Committee's recommendation is that we should relax the family reunion criteria and that our willingness to do so should be used as a bargaining counter to attract offers of additional resettlement places from other countries, the the aim of reducing drastically te size of the Hong Kong Vietnamese refugee population. The fairly cautious way in which this recommendation is framed is, I think, a recognition that things are not necessarily quite as simple as the hon. Gentleman has said.

But we are now considering the Committee's recommendation very carefully and will be responding in due course. We hope to have the support of the international community in alleviating the plight of the Vietnamese refugees who are in Hong Kong and we shall maintain a continuing dialogue with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other countries with the aim of helping all these victims of an oppressive regime.

Clearly the hon. Gentleman will not be expecting me to respond to the Select Committee tonight, as a detailed response will be given in due course. But he obviously recognises that our response, when it comes, will have a direct bearing on the case of Miss Bui's relatives.

The other development that I should mention is that before the Select Committee reported, I gave an undertaking to the BRC to review those cases in which applications for relatives in Hong Kong have been refused but where the BRC considers there exist exceptionally compelling compassionate circumstances. The BRC has provided us with details of a number of cases and Miss Bui's case is among them. Again, I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a decision tonight, but I can assure him that I shall review the case very sympathetically in the light of the BRC's representations and of what he has said so eloquently tonight. Once again, I am grateful to him for raising this most important matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes past Ten o'clock.

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