Refugee Dilemma

At the frontier bridge between Hong Kong and Red China, a beefy Australian-born constable said: 'The only real problem is sending back the ones who don't have proper papers. Why, sometimes, they fall flat down and holler bloody murder. But we just pick 'em up and carry 'em to the bridge and send 'em back." Defensively, he added: "What are we gonna do with 'em? Hong Kong's bursting at the seams with Chinese refugees. Formosa won't have them. The United States has a strict quota system--and don't send them to Australia, thank you.'' The grim question of refugees from Red China got a rare public hearing last week in Hong Kong's Legislative Council.

Four Chinese boys and two girls had daringly escaped from the mainland in a sampan so leaky that it sank. Rescued by a passing junk, the six youngsters were vouched for by a Hong Kong relative who would guarantee their support. But the police arrested the six for illegal entry, brusquely pushed them back across the border. The Hong Kong Tiger Standard blasted the government for an "appallingly inhumane blunder." The president of Formosa's Free China Relief Association called the action "tantamount to sentencing the youths to death.'' Over the Fence. It was not simply a case of bureaucratic heartlessness. Since the Communists seized China in 1949. Hong Kong has absorbed a million refugees. Because Red China cynically gives exit visas to the aged and infirm who are of no use at home, an average of 1,500 a month come over the border legally. An estimated 16,000 more per month arrive illegally, either packed in the holds of fishing junks or by climbing the eight-foot fence that runs along the 22-mile land border with China. Under the tacit rules of the game, those refugees who make it into town are usually ignored by the police.

The cost to Hong Kong has been staggering. Since 1949, school population has leaped from 143,000 to 658,000. medical expenditures from $4.6 million to $26.3 million. Despite a vast housing program, thousands of luckless refugees still sleep in doorways and on rooftops, or huddle in shantytowns clinging to the sides of hills.

Ajar Door. Speaking in the Legislative Council last week. Colonial Secretary Claude Burgess said Hong Kong's 3,250,000 population (a density of 8,200 per sq. mi.) was "now dangerously swollen'' and required a restrictive immigration policy to maintain the present standard of living. In sum. the speech suggested that Hong Kong will get tougher on the refugees but will continue to leave the door slightly ajar. One telling point made by Burgess: the refugee problem is one that "no country in the world is in practice willing to share with us." Over the past ten years. Formosa has taken only 14,000 Chinese refugees from Hong Kong--little more than twice the number admitted to the U.S.. and fewer even than Canada (20,000).

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