TNAG-2931-FCO40-4206-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-British-National-(Overseas)-1993 — Page 80

BRANCHI

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BN(0) applications in early 1997.

According to the

Memoranda exchanged between UK and China at the

signing of the Joint Declaration, an ex-BDTC w111

There

nave to have a BN (O) passport in hand on 1 July 1997

to be able to use a BN (0) passport afterwards.

are about 3 million BDTCs who have not applied for

BN(0) passports.

The Government officials confirmed that

although the BN(0) take-up cate was now much higher

than that for BDTC, the overall trend plus reasonable

presumptions as to how many would want to take up the

BN (0) option, suggested that if no action was taken

there would still be far too many people leaving the

application for BN(0) passports till the last minute.

"We obviously could not cope with this,' the

spokesman said. "The Immigration Department would

not have anything like the resources to deal with,

say, a million applications in a few months. And it

would be completely unacceptable not to be able to

process any applications in time.

to act now."

Therefore we have

The Government officials made it clear to

the Sub Committee that BDTCs who missed their age

group slot for no good reason would not be able to