HK migrants alarmed by new British policy
Hong Kong people who emigrated to Britain with a BNO passport are alarmed by the new immigration policy outlined on Monday by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Most alarming is a new requirement that migrants must live and work for 10 years in the UK before they can apply for citizenship, double the five that was the requirement before May 12.
Migrants will have to wait 10 years before they can apply for UK settlement, instead of five years, with a proposed fast track for those who can show their “contribution to the economy and society” through a “points-based system”.
Starmer’s speech, entitled Plan for Change, was a response to intense public anger over uncontrolled immigration which has created a burden on schools, hospitals and housing that the country cannot satisfy.
In the year to June 2023, net legal migration reached a record 906,000. Politically, the greatest beneficiary is is the anti-immigration party, Reform UK. In the local elections on May 1, it won 30 per cent of the vote, the highest of any party and ahead of Labour with 20 per cent.
The policy does not make clear if the ten-year requirement applies to those who settled before it was announced or only to those who arrive later.
Immigration lawyers said that they were receiving floods of questions from individuals and employers worried about what the change would mean.
Asked to clarify, a spokeswoman for the Home Office this week declined to provide details. “More details are going to be available in due course,” she said but could not say when.
For many potential migrants, the ten-year wait may be a game-changer. The main reasons people go are to give children schools that do not teach “patriotic education” and obtain a new passport.
As of March this year, Britain had approved more than 200,000 BNO visas for Hongkongers. What has become clear since the scheme began in January 2021 is that most migrants cannot find a job comparable to the ones they held in Hong Kong. They pay higher taxes and do not have the domestic help they had at home. Their standard of living has often fallen.
But they are prepared to make this personal and financial sacrifice for the sake of their children and the passport.
Before migrating in 2023, Brian Leung and his wife earned HK$80,000 a month. Now his wife stays at home caring for their son and he has a less responsible job, in a hotel in central England, with a lower salary.
Speaking before the new policy was announced, he said they planned to stay until they received their new passports and then would decide where to live. “The economy in Hong Kong will almost certainly be better than that in Britain and we would earn more there,” he said.
But ten years may be too long a period to give up your best earning years. There is also the possibility that the regulations may become more restrictive, in the event Reform UK form the next government.
One of the most prominent migrants is Chip Tsao, a journalist and commentator. “Moving to the UK on a BNO visa required careful consideration – it was not a decision to be made impulsively,” he said. “Many left Hong Kong purely for ideological reasons, only to realise that political beliefs cannot outweigh economic realities.”
English language fluency, both spoken and written, is also a major issue. Nurses, for example, must learn how to understand local accents and dialects when they speak to their patients.
Under the new policy, such fluency will be a condition for deciding whether a person is eligible for citizenship.
The Hongkongers are the unfortunate victims of the flood of newcomers. Most British people regard them as model migrants. They work and study hard, pay taxes, live quietly and do not disturb their neighbours.
Could the change to ten years be overturned by the courts? “The outcome of challenges will depend on whether migrants coming through particular visa routes had been given explicit promises of the terms on which they would be allowed to apply for settlement at the time,” said Colin Yeo, a barrister specialising in immigration law.
“Is it not fundamentally unfair that migrants who were highly skilled, with options to work in many countries, had made an informed choice to come to the UK only to find the rules had changed under them?” he added.
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