TNAG-1525-FCO40-2089-Hong-Kong-Parliamentary-Sub-Committee-on-Race-Relations-and--1986 — Page 143

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S T Nash Esq

2

28 February 1986

and distance from family, associated with escape abroad, suggest that it is unlikely to be considered worthwhile by numbers sufficient to lead to a significant increase in boat people. There will, however, for a long time continue to be a steady flow of those who see the grass greener outside Vietnam and who, once abroad, give some other excuse for their emigration ditto ditto Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Central America.

5. Frustratingly, improvement in incomes within Vietnam may for the foreseeable future ensure the continued emigration of boat people as it becomes easier for families to accumulate the four thousand dollars that a place on a boat is said to cost, at present. It would be very typical of this part of the world for a family to raise the money to send one family member abroad as a good investment in enabling others in the family to join that emigrant some years in the future.

6. That previous resettlement programmes have not been a success is indicated by Vo Van Kiet's statement that there has to be better preparation of the areas to be resettled, with more amenities and more support to the settlers. These programmes are a vain attempt to ease growing overpopulation and un/under- employment in existing communities.

7.

Finally, movement of very large numbers of northerners to the south presents a political risk to the regime. It appears that they are conscious that northerners can easily be corrupted by the freer and more open society that has so far survived in the south. Simple encouragement or even just permission for the young to move south would create a flow of people from one end to the other. But that would weaken the power of the north in due course. No doubt the authorities feel a little safer in planning to send the young not to the southern developed areas but to areas that are at present underpopulated. But the movement will not be a success and the very attempt will only aggravate the poverty of the regime in its ability to provide resources for more productive development. The plans are part of the desire to maintain the illusion of an honest peasant society when every step/is taken towards a stronger and more prosperous industrial economy will inevitably lead to more urbanisation. They seem as determined as ever to perpetuate their mistakes.

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