We all know this in a sense. But our very success in containing the problem sometimes allows us to forget its seriousness. We still arrest around 100 illegal immigrants a day either trying to cross the border or already over it. This is despite the most modern border-control equipment and an excellent para-military Police force manning the border very efficiently within the humanitarian parameters of which we are proud. The approach of 1997 has not diminished this problem. Indeed our increasing success and acute labour shortage, plus even more exaggerated rumours of it fostered by snakeheads no doubt, led in the last two years to a deterioration of the situation. It looked seriously threatening last year and earlier this year. February 1993 saw the highest monthly average of arrests since our current policy began in 1980. At 132 a day, this indicator of arrests suggests a level of illegal immigration well over 50 000 a year. For our population, this is one of the highest levels of illegal immigration pressure in the world, comparable to that of the US, which is getting so much more publicity these days.
I can report some recent relief, however.
The upward trend
of the last two years has fortunately held back in May, June and July. This may have been helped by an Appeal Court guidance in March which suggested to Magistrates that employers of IIs should get fifteen months jail even if they only employ one and do not exploit him or her - and of course usually they do. This judicial response reinforces an overall welcome public trend over the last ten years the strong support that the Government gets from the community as a whole, including your members, on illegal immigration. This was not always so. There was a time when the Hong Kong Government was criticized for being so tough on illegal immigration. I think this change is just one of many signs of the development of Hong Kong as an integrated community.
Nor need this change in 1997. One of the less well-known features of the Joint Declaration is that makes it clear that (in 165) that "Entry into the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of persons from other parts of China shall continue to be regulated in accordance with the present practice." The border will remain, as should the necessarily strong border controls and immigration rules, and China's co-operation with them. These are not, as you know, only directed at Chinese IIs though they impact necessarily mostly on them. We also have a growing, if much lesser, problem of illegal immigration or overstaying of visitors from further afield, including the Indian sub-continent. We are grateful for your community' support in cracking down on this also.
Legal immigration
This strictness against illegal immigration sometimes includes the sad necessity of repatriating children to one parent when they have been sneaked in to join the other. Unlike most other places, hong kong cannot let in all husbands and wives, let alone children of residents, automatically, because of the sheer size of the potential immigration commitment. We try to minimise real
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