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Dame Jill Knight DBE MP
House of Commons
London
SWIA OAA
It was a pleasure to meet with the Friends of Hong Kong on 13 March and to have had the opportunity to discuss with you several important issues concerning Hong Kong. You will recall that I undertook to write to you clarifying some of the points raised in our discussion.
now
As you know, we have this week put before Parliament legislation which will grant British citizenship to
50,000 Hong Kong residents and their families. Our
objective is not to encourage immigration into this country, but to give key people in Hong Kong the confidence they need to remain in the territory, where they are essential to the economy and the administration.
At present, they can normally gain the assurance of a foreign passport only by emigrating and settling in the
country where they hope to acquire citizenship. This is why so many talented and enterprising Hong Kong people have emigrated to countries such as Canada and Australia in recent years. Our scheme will give a limited number of these people the assurance which they want without any need for them to hire in the UK before they qualify for our citizenship.
It is of course theoretically possible that every one of the 50,000 families who benefit from our scheme will
decide to come and live in Britain. We think this
extremely unlikely given their strong cultural personal and professional ties with Hong Kong. Indeed, we have
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