Many refugees headed by boat to nearby countries, initially Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

In 1976, the Hong Kong Government applied to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for material aid and faster processing of resettlement requests.

[6] One year later, this first group of refugees, who had been under the responsibility of the Civil Aid Service, were entirely resettled in the United States, France, Germany, Australia, and Hong Kong.

[2] To deter the influx of refugees, new arrivals from Vietnam were interned in "closed camps" from July 1982 as possibilities for resettlement to third countries dwindled.

[11] The United States started imposing stricter entry requirements on refugees in 1982 in a bid to slow the numbers accepted.

[14] By 1987, many other Western countries had lowered their quotas for Vietnamese refugees whilst the influx into Hong Kong continued to increase, peaking at some 300 a day in 1989,[15] fed by rumours that Vietnamese migrants could gain amnesty simply by landing on Hong Kong soil.

As the economic and political situation in Vietnam improved, and the flow of boat people was stemmed, Hong Kong's status as a first port of asylum was revoked on 9 January 1998.

The plan applied to 973 refugees that have been stranded in Hong Kong, and 327 migrants whom the Vietnamese government refused to accept.

While stating that Hong Kong would continue to enforce the policy of repatriating illegal immigrants from Vietnam, then-Secretary for Security Regina Ip also commented that "the only effective and durable solution" for the refugees and migrants was "complete integration", and that "Integration is a humanitarian solution, especially for the children of the [refugees] and [migrants] who were born in Hong Kong.

[22] The Chi Ma Wan Detention Centre would become the first closed camp after the Government passed the Immigration (Amendment) Bill 1982,[10] set up on 2 July.

Plans for a second camp, at Hei Ling Chau, were initiated at the end of July, shortly after the arrival of 1,523 refugees in the month.

Later, from June 1989, the runway of the former military airfield at Shek Kong was turned into a holding facility to house an estimated 7,000 refugees, amidst protests from local residents.

[31] The United Nations owed Hong Kong HKD 1.61 billion for its handling of Vietnamese boat people.