Hong Kong residents are likely to move to the UK faster than the British government has anticipated and more should be done to prepare for their arrival, a new advocacy group has said.
The group, HongKongers in Britain, surveyed territory residents hoping to emigrate under a new British government scheme that opens next month, allowing those with colonial-era British National Overseas (BNO) status to obtain visas and pursue a “path to citizenship.”
The British Home Office has already said it expects nearly half a million people to take up the offer over its first three years, but HongKongers in Britain said the number could be more than 600,000.
Photo: AFP
About three-quarters of those planning a move hold university degrees and earn salaries well above the territory’s average, so will be well-positioned to contribute to the British economy.
However, few have family in the UK and only half have friends here, so they might need help settling and integrating. Three-quarters plan to travel with children, so schools need to be prepared for an influx of students, the group said.
Four out of five of those surveyed want to move in the next two years, quicker than anticipated by the British government.
“The speed in terms of how soon they want to come to the UK or leave Hong Kong [is] quite astonishing,” Rikkie Yeung of HongKongers in Britain said. “Many will come soon, very soon. The majority, 80 percent, were planning to emigrate, leave Hong Kong, within two years.”
The UK’s plan for a path to citizenship was drawn up in response to a National Security Law passed by Beijing this summer, which has been used to crush dissent in Hong Kong across politics, academia and the media.
The survey of those hoping to use it to emigrate was not a random sampling of territory residents, because migration to the UK is politically sensitive.
China has condemned the policy and threatened to stop recognizing the BNO passports and take other “countermeasures.”
Instead, HongKongers in Britain looked for survey participants on social media channels, where it has a strong following. More than 300 people participated anonymously.
There have been predictions of a brain drain as many in the territory consider the UK’s visa offer or emigration to other countries including Canada and Australia.
About 3 million people in Hong Kong, or nearly half its population, are eligible for BNO passports, and they would be able to travel with dependants.
Those who wanted to move to the UK overwhelmingly said their main motivation for uprooting their lives and moving halfway around the world was political pressure.
“Ninety-six percent consider Hong Kong no longer a safe and free home that they are used to living in, after the passing of the National Security Law,” the report said.
Nearly all see their move as a step toward citizenship, with 93 percent hoping to apply when they are eligible after five years’ residency.
A small proportion of those hoping to move have been arrested for their role in pro-democracy protests since last year. Although criminal records are often a bar for visas, HongKongers in Britain called on British authorities to use discretion in cases of applicants charged with political crimes.
Several respondents to the survey said they worried about surveillance by Chinese security forces, even in the UK.
The group called on British authorities to consider excluding groups who could “harm national security,” such as Hong Kong police and officials, from the visa scheme.
It also called for an expansion to cover those who do not have BNO status, but are in need of a safe haven, including younger protesters born after the 1997 handover from British colonial rule, or whose parents do not hold BNO status.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
IRANIAN THREATS: Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami said that it would be a ‘mistake’ for Israel to attack Iran and if it did ‘we will strike you again painfully’ Israel yesterday bombed a Syrian coastal city, while the US conducted multiple strikes on targets in Yemen nearly a month into Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza all belong to the so-called “axis of resistance” led by Iran, which on Oct. 1 conducted a missile strike on Israel. Israel has vowed to retaliate for the strike. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami yesterday said in a speech that Tehran would hit Israel “painfully” if it attacks Iranian targets. “If you make a mistake and attack our targets, whether in the region or in
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the