UK clears visa route for Hong Kong residents to become citizens | China News

Hong Kong residents can apply for a new visa from Sunday which gives them the chance to become British citizens as the UK opens its doors to those who want to escape the Chinese crackdown on dissent in the city.

From Sunday afternoon, anyone with a British Overseas Passport (BNO) and their dependents will be able to apply online for a visa allowing them to live and work in the UK. After five years, they can apply for citizenship.

The visa plan is a response to Beijing’s decision last year to impose sweeping national security law on Hong Kong, a former British colony, to quell huge and sometimes violent protests in favor of the democracy.

The UK has said the law, which punishes subversion, collusion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, violates the terms of the agreements under which Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. London did argue that she had a duty. Moral towards the people of Hong Kong. .

“We have honored our deep ties of history and friendship with the people of Hong Kong, and we have stood for freedom and self-reliance,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of the plan this week.

China has reacted with fury to the visa offer.

On Friday, he announced that BNO passports would no longer be recognized as a legitimate travel or identification document.

This move was largely symbolic as Hong Kongers tend to use their own passports or ID cards to get out of the city.

But Beijing said it was ready to take “additional measures”, raising fears that the authorities would try to prevent Hong Kong residents from leaving for the United Kingdom.

Thousands of people flee Hong Kong

Cindy, a businesswoman and mother of two young children, left Hong Kong for London last week.

“Getting uprooted like that is certainly not easy. But things got uglier last year, the government really pushed us back, ”he told the Associated Press news agency, declining to give his last name because he feared repercussions for speaking out against the Chinese government.

“Everything we value – free speech, fair elections, freedoms – has been eroded. It’s not Hong Kong that we used to know anymore, it’s no longer a place we can call home.

The UK has predicted that there could be as many as 154,000 Hong Kong people over the next year and up to 322,000 in five years, generating an estimated ‘net profit’ of £ 2.9 billion ( $ 4 billion).

Earlier this week, the British government said some 7,000 Hong Kongers with BNO status had arrived in the country since July. They have moved under a separate licensing system out of the rule and will also be able to apply for citizenship access visas.

The UK introduced BNO passports in the 1980s for people who were “citizens of UK dependent territories by connection to Hong Kong”.

Many townspeople at the time wanted the UK to grant them full citizenship, but China opposed the move. The BNO was a compromise that granted Hong Kongers born before 1997 the right to stay in the UK for six consecutive months, but without a job or right of establishment.

Now it has become one of the few outlets for Hong Kong people hoping to start a new life abroad as authorities make mass arrests of democracy supporters and mobilize to purge the agitated city of dissidents. .

“I think if you knew when to shut up then everything would be fine in Hong Kong,” said Fan, 39, who also recently arrived in London. “But I don’t want to do this. I can complain about the queen if I wanted to, I can say it all here.

Fan, an artist, told the AP he has sold his apartment in Hong Kong and plans to slowly build a new life in the UK, a country he has never visited before. You won’t be alone from scratch.

‘Rescue boat’

Under the visa regime, those wishing to relocate must show that they have sufficient funds to support themselves and their dependents for at least six months.

Hong Kong people already in the UK who are involved in helping others relocate say many of the early applicants tend to be educated, middle-class people, often with young families, who have enough money. to finance their move.

“Most of the people we spoke to are families with children of primary school or kindergarten age,” Nic, an activist from a group called Lion Rock Hill UK, told AFP news agency. calling for anonymity.

Mike, a medical scientist who recently moved with his family to the city of Manchester, told AFP that the BNO passport “is definitely a lifeboat for Hong Kong people.”

He said many in Hong Kong feared China would prevent residents from leaving the territory.

“So it is better to leave as soon as possible,” he added.