Immigration and Nationality Department
Lunar House 40 Wellesley Road Croydon CR9 2BY
Telephone 01-760
(GTN 3882)
Mr Keith Wright
Room 9/1
HE1
Division
HM Treasury
Parliament Street
LONDON SW1P 3AG
Dear in Wirget
CONFIDENTIAL
HOME OFFICE
ind
Your reference
Our reference
MR J. Marris (DR)
FCO.
186
ce Me Paul (fi)
på.
Jals 27/3
Date 9 February 1990
нко 3401/14
RECEIVED IN REGLERY
1 1 APR 1990
DESK OFFICER
STRY
INDEX
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Action Taken
HONG KONG BILL: FEE MECHANISM
This letter sets out more fully the issues we discussed the other day. We need to devise a mechanism for setting and collecting fees under the above Bill and I should be grateful for advice from the Treasury.
Background
The Foreign Secretary announced before Christmas the Government's intention of bringing forward legislation to grant British Citizenship to a maximum of 50,000 key personnel in Hong Kong and their spouses and children under 18.
The Bill is planned to be introduced and completed this session with a view to inviting applications as early as possible thereafter and issuing most of the 50,000 places during the course of 1991. Between 10 and 20 per cent of the places, however, will be held over for a second competition nearer 1997. No grants of citizenship under the legislation will be made after Hong Kong's hand over to China on 1 July 1997.
The Bill will be a short enabling instrument with the details and criteria of the selection scheme set out in a secondary instrument to be tabled afterwards for Parliament's approval (although we propose to table a full description of the scheme informally at the same time as the Bill).
The main features of the selection arrangements will be as follows:
(a) it will be the Governor's task to process applications (there will probably be between 5 million and 1.5 million) and forward no more than 50,000 recommendations to the Secretary of State (say 45,000 in the first round and 5,000 in the second);
CONFIDENTIAL
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.