In a landmark decision, Hong Kong’s highest court yesterday ruled against granting residency to two Philippine domestic workers, dashing the hopes of several hundred thousand other domestic helpers from ever gaining permanent residency in the territory.
Five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled unanimously that Evangeline Banao Vallejos and Daniel Domingo would not be allowed to settle permanently in Hong Kong after residing there for more than seven years, a period that would ordinarily qualify foreigners to become permanent residents under the constitution.
The court ruled that domestic workers should not be treated as “ordinarily resident” in the financial hub given contracts that tied them to finite temporary employment.
Photo: Reuters
“The nature of foreign domestic helpers’ residence in Hong Kong is highly restrictive,” the judgment said. “The foreign domestic helper is obliged to return to the country of origin at the end of the contract and is told from the outset that admission is not for the purposes of settlement.”
A lower court had previously ruled that the Philippine pair had the right to seek permanent residency in the territory.
Over the past few years, the controversial legal battle has divided Hong Kongers over whether 286,000 domestic helpers — largely from the Philippines and Indonesia, but also other countries like Nepal, India and Pakistan — should be entitled to residency on a par with other foreigners.
A small group of migrant workers protested the ruling outside the historic red-brick courthouse, denouncing it as institutionalized discrimination.
“Today is a very sad day for migrant workers in Hong Kong,” said Eman Villanueva, the head of Philippine advocacy group United Filipinos in Hong Kong. “It gave its judicial seal to unfair treatment and the social exclusion of foreign domestic helpers in Hong Kong.”
The ruling also bars dependents of domestic workers from seeking residency in Hong Kong.
Critics say that the economic burden that would be caused by such an influx could have been huge, given education, housing, healthcare and welfare costs. One political party estimated that it could cost taxpayers an extra HK$25 billion (US$3.2 billion) per year.
Many Hong Kong families and expatriates consider having a maid essential, with many employing a live-in helper who cooks, cleans and helps with childcare. However, maids are excluded from a minimum wage and other basic services.
Despite the government’s victory, lingering ambiguity over eligibility for permanent residency in Hong Kong as stipulated in the Basic Law, the territory’s mini-constitution, could trigger further legal battles in the future.
Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to Chinese rule in 1997, has always had an uneasy relationship with immigration and right of residency issues that have sometimes strained its ties with Beijing.
A 1999 case which ruled that China-born children had a right of abode in Hong Kong sparked an outcry over Beijing’s perceived meddling in the territory’s judicial independence.
The government had asked Hong Kong’s highest court to seek Beijing’s clarification on precisely who qualifies for right of abode in a bid to resolve the issue, but the court of final appeal rejected this request.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.