TNAG-1540-FCO40-2104-Further-resettlement-of-Vietnamese-refugees-from-Hong-Kong-i-1986 — Page 176

SEAD and UND concur.

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N

Background and Argument

SCORRI Report

3. The Government's reply to the SCORRI Report "Refugees

and Asylum, with Special Reference to the Vietnamese"

published last September, accepted SCORRI's

recommendation

that "family reunion criteria be relaxed in respect of

Vietnamese in camps in countries of temporary asylum". The Reply estimated that some 420 refugees in Hong Kong would

qualify under the relaxed criteria. Over 350 had arrived by end-June.

At the present rate of

should have arrived by end-August.

resettlement

420

4.

SCORRI also recommended that:

"If necessary, and as part of a burden-sharing

agreement, Britain should accept a small share of

those who are hard to resettle and have spent

years in camps.

The Government's reply was:

5.

accepting, in

HMG are prepared to consider addition to the family reunion cases, further limited numbers of Vietnamese refugees from Hong

Kong. A decision on this will be taken in the

light of the willingness shown by other

resettlement countries to respond to

to respond to Hong Kong's

needs and of all the circumstances at the time.'

Secretary,

who

was

This heavily-qualified formula was extracted with

difficulty from great

the then Home

against any such commitment. We had originally sought a more far-reaching commitment which would have involved our acceptance of 500 refugees per

the

420 family reunion

annum,

in addition to

cases. We had argued that this would

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