ENG-1965 — Page 202

11

Immigration and Tourism

THE Immigration Department has now existed as an independent organization for over four years and the theme constantly running through all sections is more work, more documents and more travellers. The airport, Chinese and harbour sections carry most of the work load, but all sections are affected to some extent. The situation is complicated by the need to carry out extensive surveys of procedures and policies, the need to open new sub-offices, and continuing severe congestion in the headquarters office which is visited by about 2,000 people every day. The total recorded move- ment during 1965 was 4,218,297, consisting of 2,116,901 arrivals and 2,101,396 departures. This compares with a total of 3,387,170 in 1964. The main lines of movement were as usual between Hong Kong and China, and Hong Kong and Macau. Illegal immigration continued, although on a much diminished scale.

As always, the demand for travel documents fell mainly on the Chinese section. This was partly due to the fact that Hong Kong's own population is now travelling on an increasingly large scale and also to the fact that many hundreds of thousands of Chinese living overseas are applying to visit or live in Hong Kong. In August the necessity for re-entry visas on Hong Kong Certificates of Identity was abolished, considerably benefiting Hong Kong residents wishing to travel. Special arrangements were again made for children at school in China and Macau to visit their parents in Hong Kong during the Chinese New Year and summer holidays.

The British and Commonwealth section continued to be busy throughout the year, largely because many more local residents are now eligible to hold British passports and are travelling a good deal. The department processes travel applications and deals with citizenship problems on behalf of all Commonwealth countries not otherwise represented in Hong Kong, and the number of visa applications for these territories also increased considerably during the year.