26 July. On 9 July he repeated in the House of Commons the
Government's assurance that if members of the ethnic minorities
with solely British nationality came under pressure to leave
Hong Kong and had nowhere else to go, the Government of the day
would be expected to consider with particular sympathy their
case for admission to the United Kingdom.
the Hong
This comes
12. As anticipated in our Memorandum (paragraph 43) the
Government introduced in June an Order in Council:
Kong (British Nationality) (Amendment) Order 1993.
into force on 21 July 1993 and lays down a phased registration programme (by age groups) for the acquisition of the status of British National (Overseas) (BNO). (This is the form of British
nationality available to Hong Kong BDTCs once Hong Kong ceases
to be a Dependent Territory). The Order was introduced to
enable the Hong Kong Government to process all applications for the new status before their power to do so ceases on 1 July
1997. All British Dependent Territory Citizens (about 3.6
million) are eligible to become BNOS. Only 600,000 people now hold BNO passports.
13. In response to concerns in Hong Kong that the surrender of
the familiar BDTC passports by those receiving passports for the new BNO status might be wrongly interpreted as the premature deprivation of BDTC status, the Home Secretary has agreed that
Hong Kong citizens may retain their BDTC passports on
registration as BNOs.
EX-CHINA VIETNAMESE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
14.
During the summer there has been an influx into Hong Kong
of ethnic Chinese, originally from Vietnam, who have been
settled in China following the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979.
These people are known in Hong Kong as Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants (ECVIIS). As their name implies, having been
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