TNAG-1534-FCO40-2098-Hong-Kong-Vietnamese-refugees-repatriation-1986 — Page 61

ET 1ARK

Mr Court, SEAD

CONFIDENTIAL

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Reference.........

HKK 243/8

HKK 243/8

RECEIVED

2 7 AUG 1986

ORDERLY DEPARTURE PROGRAMME

1.

Thank you for copying to us your minute of 13 August to Mrs Darling Rogerson.

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2- HKD does not have a direct interest in the ODP, but perhaps I might offer a few marginal comments on para 2 of your minute. I think it a highly debatable proposition to suggest a direct link between ODP and the decline in illegal departures from Vietnam since 1979. Certainly the fact that ODP began in 1979 and that illegal departures also began to fall in late 1979 is arguably coincidental: the decline in boat departures between 1979 and 1980 is attributable to one over-riding factor (the Vietnamese "moratorium" on aiding such departures since late 1979). There are also other factors, but they are marginal in comparison. Hence variations in regional arrival rates in places of first asylum since late 1979 have also been largely marginal.

3.

This is mainly circumstantial. But we do have some (piecemeal) data to support the argument. Since around 1982 Hong Kong have been asking newly arrived Vietnamese refugees whether they have applied for the ODP, and if not, why not. Responses are almost universally negative: only a small proportion (less than 10%) have even heard of the ODP; of those a tiny minority have applied, and have either been refused or have grown tired of waiting. Reasons for not applying are predictable: conviction that one will not be eligible, fear that one will not be able to afford the bribes and/or taxes required, above all fear of making the authorities aware that one wishes place. We may assume that there is an pleading: refugees are probably wary of viable alternative in

in case, such admission affects their (already tenuous) resettlement prospects. But even if we také this

to leave in the first element here of special admitting that ODP is a

suspicion into account, it is plain that Hong Kong's arrivals do not view the ODP as an acceptable alternative to departure by

boat.

4.

There is a further and simpler reason to believe that ODP's influence on the "boat people" problem will inevitably be limited: ODP is open to South Vietnamese only, and about half of Hong Kong's arrivals (the half who are hardest to resettle) come from the North.

5.

When UNHCR officials (in Hong Kong and Geneva) have waxed over-lyrical about the virtues of ODP as the ultimate solution to the boat people problem, I have on occasion presented them with the rough data in para 3 above. When pressed, they usually admit that there is no direct link between the availability of the ODP escape route and the rise and fall in the rate of illegal

CONFIDENTIAL