TNAG-2639-FCO40-3831-Future-of-Hong-Kong-British-nationality-dependants-1992 — Page 43

Home Secretary

RESTRICTED

हिमच

FROM: Secretary of State

DATE:

July 1992

RIGHT OF ABODE IN THE UK FOR CERTAIN CHILDREN OF HONG

KONG PARENTS

1.

I was grateful to you for looking at this problem at

such short notice, and for agreeing a sympathetic line

for me to take at my press conference in Hong Kong. The plight of this small group of families has attracted

considerable attention in Hong Kong [[see for example the

enclosed copy of an editorial from the South China

Morning Post on the day after my Press Conference)]. are widely seen as deserving of special consideration.

They

2. I recognise that the children concerned are not alone

in being affected by the entry into force of the British

Nationality Act on 1 January 1983, and I understand your

reluctance to give a blanket undertaking without the time

to look at the issue in more detail. I was encouraged

that you told Tristan Garel-Jones that you thought that

with a generous interpretation of existing guidlines, over half these children should succeed in applications

for full British citizenship. I hope that on closer

examination you will feel able to use your discretion to register all of them, unless there are other grounds for objecting to any of them. I say that for reasons:

رہے

- First because this is a group that can be distinguished from any others in the world, since in Hong Kong uniquely