Miya please copy. Show to liv
Wire bow $19.
Buesch made by the Principal Assistant Secretary for Security
Dr Simon Vickers
plw ethane mins. (137) give this pay to Mr M
سمرات
HKD 340 / 6 Indian Resources Group on Monday, 23 August, 1993
RECEIVE
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RE
71419455
8 SEP 199319 Immigration Policy and Nationality Position after 1997
zve to reys to Bivo proy.
sa
نشده
I must first give Ken Woodhouse's apologies for having had to call off at the last moment. He was asked out of the blue to go to Canton for today's urgent meeting with the Chinese authorities to help resolve our latest Ex-China Vietnamese II crisis. He asked me to send his profuse apologies on his and Government's behalf. 1 know he was grateful to have been invited to speak to you on our immigration and nationality policy, and that he was looking forward to meeting you and thanking you personally for the charitable work which you have been carrying out, particularly in the area of prison visitors.
For myself, I am flattered to have been accepted in his place and pleased that at least from one personal angle, as one or two of you know, it is particularly appropriate that it should be me that is coming before you : not only are those subjects the main responsibilities of my present post but, remarkably coincidentally given our civil service's deliberate and necessary emphasis on generalism, my history doctorate is in the field of Indians overseas in the British Empire; and here you are, the last great Indian minority in the last surviving major colony of that multiracial Empire (though of course 'Empire' and 'colony' are words that we have to blush now to use). I spent three years in India doing that doctorate and, believe me, I have great affection for that country, its civilization and its people at home and overseas. llowever 1 am of course here tonight as a representative of Hong Kong's Government and therefore Hong Kong's people. (If you wanted me to talk about Indians overseas, elsewhere, in the past, I'm afraid that would have to be a future, personal invitation which I would also be happy to take up). This evening I am going to be covering the llong Kong position from the Hong Kong angle which I know you all share. I will touch on those issues that are really British issues rather than Hong Kong issues, and certainly British Government issues, because they particularly concern your community's request from the British Covernment which we support. But I cannot take these issues out of their Hong Kong context, which is a unique one in both immigration and nationality terms for everyone.
Illegal Immigration
I will start with what is the most important immigration policy for Hong Kong and one that is not a British concern per se at all. That is the prevention of illegal immigration from China. To be situated on the edge of the most populous, and still one of the poorest countries in the world makes our borders naturally vulnerable. When one has been as successful as Hong Kong just economically
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and not
this vulnerability or attraction is magnified
many times.
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