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Mr Hum, Hong Kong Dept
Vietnamese Boat People in Hong Kong: resettlement in UK
The Secretary of State saw the Home Secretary today in the House of Commons and spoke along the lines of the speaking note submitted with your minute of 21 June.
C2% see (63
He left
a copy of the speaking note with Mr Hurd and also the note of our proposal which you kindly provided this morning.
The Home Secretary said that he would take these papers away and look at them. He recalled that the Cabinet had agreed not to make a further resettlement offer if the total number of refugees in Hong Kong kept increasing unchecked. He thought it was important to be able to show solid evidence that the screening policy had some deterrent effect before the Foreign Secretary and himself put a proposal to the Cabinet. He noted that the Vietnamese were not easy to settle. They were not skilled. They did however settle in the end. He concluded that if we could show that the flow of boat people into Hong Kong had been staunched, the case for taking some more in order to stimulate a broader international effort would be strong.
The Home Secretary also thought that we should try to elaborate on why we thought that a UK quota of a thousand would be sufficient to encourage helpful responses from other resettlement countries. He thought that we would need some chapter and verse on what had passed between ourselves and the other countries on this point.
The Secretary of State agreed that we should flesh out our thinking on these lines. He accepted that we should try to make some assessment of the effect of the new policy before going to Cabinet colleagues. He thought however that there was a good case for not waiting too long after the change of policy before making a move on resettlement.
22 June 1988
cc: PS/Lord Glenarthur
PS/Mr Eggar Mr Gillmore
Mr McLaren
Mr Colvin, SEAD Mr Williams, UND
(R N Peirce)
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