TNAG-1427-FCO40-1910-Vietnamese-refugees-in-Hong-Kong-general-1986 — Page 67

1

The Jubilee

camp has been difficult to run in the

past, mainly because the rate

of

resettlement from it has

been very low. All the refugees living there are ethnic

South Vietnam, usually of rural and poor

Vietnamese

educational background; and many of

of their cases have been

looked at by at least one

resettlement country and

however, UNHCR has been

rejected. Since December 1984

conducting a special campaign to increase resettlement

from Jubilee, with the aim of substantially reducing the

This has had some success, but the

camp population.

population still stands at 2,200.

On the general question of resettlement from Hong

Kong, Ms Goodrum i s correct in her understanding that the

UK has agreed to accept some 500 Vietnamese re fugees for

This decision was announced in the White

resettlement.

Paper which the

Government published on 26

September in

response to the recent report of the Home Affairs Sub-

Committee on Race Relations and Immigration (SCORRI),

"Refugees and Asylum with

Special Reference to the

Vietnamese". Most of the refugees will come from camps

in Hong Kong (a few will come from other places of

of first

asylum in South East Asia)

•

They all have relatives in

the UK, but their cases would normally have fallen

outside the Home Office's immigration criteria for family

reunion cases.

Altogether some 19,000 Indo-Chinese

refugees, including over 12,000 from Hong Kong, have been

resettled in the UK since 1975.