CONFIDENTIAL
3. The international response to our SCORRI commitment in
the past year been extremely useful. Our agreement to take the 500, and Hong Kong's undertaking to resettle 250,
prompted UNHCR to declare Hong Kong a priority area for
resettlement. Other countries responded by offering about
1200 additional places, and as a result Hong Kong will
achieve a resettlement level this year similar to, or even
above, that of last year, at a time when international
resistance to resettlement is growing and regional
resettlement rates are falling. I doubt your prediction that Hong Kong's camp population on 31 December will be as high as it was on 1 January: despite the higher arrival
rate (for which there are many causes, largely unrelated
to Hong Kong's refugee resettlement rate), Hong Kong's
population on 31 December should be lower by between one
and two thousand than it was
a year before.
4.
This is encouraging. But our responsibility for the territory obliges us to do all we can to maintain the
momentum of this resettlement effort. I am concerned also
at recent signs in the Hong Kong press and in LegCo that
local opinion is focussing on the refugee problem. It is likely that the Hong Kong Government will soon be forced to toughen their immigration policy even further by forcibly repatriating children who enter Hong Kong illegally from China, even if their parents are already in the territory. Comparisons are bound to be drawn with the
treatment of Vietnamese arriving in Hong Kong. If HMG are
not seen to be doing what they can to help Hong Kong over
the Vietnamese, there could well be a further damaging row
between ourselves and Hong Kong, at considerable cost to
our efforts to maintain local confidence in the longterm
future of the territory.
CONFIDENTIAL
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