TNAG-1472-FCO40-2003-Ministerial-visits-from-the-UK-to-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 48

FCO40 Hong Kong Department Records 聯邦事務部香港部檔案 All

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was making before.

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that the conditions under which they were living in that country

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Obviously, the fact that people have incurred

great danger to flee from a country is some pretty good evidence

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to take this stage by stage and I know from my own experience of operating immigration policy in Britain that there is great resistance to the idea of removing anybody from Britain to a country where it is thought that the person might not be properly treated. I appreciate that fully.

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MS ? (Asian Wall Street Journal) frame do you have in mind ?

Exactly what time

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MINISTER: I don't know; I don't know.

You have got

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to remember that I am carrying out this job in the Home Office. We have the job of trying to resettle refugees in Britain when they arrive in Britain, we are very well aware of the difficulty of resettling these people in Western countries. We have had the most appalling difficulty in carrying out such a programme in Britain, so I am just saying from my own experience of the resettlement problems, from my experience of the very considerable tides of immigration which have taken place in recent years, 23 people moving in a way which was never contemplated twenty five

years ago, let alone fifty, surely it is time that we did consider other ways of dealing with these problems.

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MS ? (Asian Wall Street Journal)

Would you say within

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the next ten years you say this should begin ?

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MINISTER: Well, if you want me to give a time I certainly think that the matter is sufficiently urgent for us to be thinking in such a time frame rather than a longer one.

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MS

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solution ?

Is the repatriation policy the only long-term Is there any alternative under consideration ?

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VERBATIM REPORTERS

HONG KONG

5-8496480 5-497048 5-8496981 5-8932546 5-8122436

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