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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

If you’re a Hong Kong resident, what are your options? Can you flee the country with a visa to a first world country with rights less under pressure from a totalitarian state?

Edit: I genuinely appreciate all of the replies to this comment as this humanitarian crisis unfolds.

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In the early 90s many countries started opening up pathways for HK citizens fearing this - there was a lot of talk of "Brain Drain" in HK.

Canada in particular did a great job of encouraging emigration.

These days it's a little harder. The classic "HK passport" is the BNO - British Nationality Overseas which doesn't give you right of abode in the UK because racism.

Asylum is also extremely difficult to achieve - you'd have to have been already targeted and by that point there's already a risk of being disappeared extra-judicially.

45% of Vancouver is of Asian descent, and 30% of Vancouver is Chinese, many of whom are HK expats. 500,000 folks of HK descent live in Canada (1.5% of Canada). There's another 300,000 Canadian passport holders living in HK. It'll be very interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years.

I will need to fact check on this, I knew a lot of HK people went to Vancouver in pre 97, and that number you posted is quite staggering.

Sorry, I should have posted the reference material.

- 500K Canadian Citizens in HK [1]

- 300K of Hong Kong descent in Canada [2]

(I may have reversed this in one of the two posts).

- Ethnic breakdown of Vancouver [3] although I used the 2011 census data not the 2016 data reflected there, which explains the slight drift.

[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/unrest-in-hong-kong-fue...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Canadians

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouve...

Canada encouraged emigration to the point of completely fucking over Vancouver and Toronto housing markets.

Money laundering is the problem, not Hong Kong emigrants. Mainland China does not allow dual citizenship, this is why many Chinese living in Canada do not apply for Canadian citizenship, but instead stay as permanent resident or visa student to launder money.

https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/billions-in-d...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/pro-china-de...

Can confirm this from my friends in Vancouver and growing up there. Most Hong Kong people assimilate quite well, it’s new wave from mainland China that doesn’t. You can feel it in the atmosphere. Driving Ferrari’s everywhere and showing off. It’s not a good look for anyone.

The tax from luxury cars they bought is the best thing they could do for Canada.

Canadian govt (or BC) are not smart cats. Unfortunately.

I'd personally make tons of policies to extract as much money possible from these type of immigrants tbh.

luxury vehicle tax, empty property tax, the governments are starting to catch on

HK allows dual citizenship and there are around 300,000 Canadians living in HK right now[1]. Not sure about other nationalities. And I think HK passport can go to many countries visa free or visa on arrival[2]. So in a sense many protesters do have a plan b if needed.

1. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/unrest-in-hong-kong-fue...

2. https://www.immd.gov.hk/eng/service/travel_document/visa_fre...

The protesters are more working class than the richer HKers with multiple passports. Sure, they can leave, but it is much harder for them to establish themselves in a new country. They can buy a plane ticket, but then what?

I'm not saying it's easy, but it's better than not having the option right? Many HKers have done this during the 90s when HK became part of China.

The richer ones did as a hedge, the poorer ones not really. There were more than a few economic immigrants from HK in the 60s, 70s and even 80s, but the jobs they could get were the ones we typically associate with economic immigrants (think Bruce Lee washing dishes at a restaurant, and the old China town feel). I’m not sure if that is very viable today.

They can do what the Chinese have done since the 19th century: move and adapt. It's what my family did. Easier said than done, but I feel it's pretty ingrained now when you can even find Chinese families in places like Africa.

The pathway for foreigners to come into most countries is through a visa process, which are capital investment, work or asylum based.

For example, in the US an investment of $500k (will be $900k later this year) in certain businesses will land foreign individuals a green card. Otherwise, they'll need to come in through a family or work visa, latter of which can take years and has high barriers to entry, like requiring sponsorship or a specialized degree.

Those without means are going to have a hard time leaving the country legally.

Then don't do it legally. My family came to the US as illegals.

Southern Chinese, especially of fujian descent, do this, which is why they’ve spread so far in SE Asia, Taiwan, Africa, NYC, etc...

Cantonese are also known for emigrating.

It’s still hard, and it sucks to leave home because you can’t get a good deal there any longer.

> It’s still hard, and it sucks to leave home because you can’t get a good deal there any longer.

"good" deals in the past are a fantasy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-chinatowns-history_n...

It was always hard. The only thing that changes is the nature of the obstacles.

It was much easier to move somewhere in the 19th century if you had the money.

Its essentially impossible to move to another 1st world country without years (or decades) of process + usually a highly valued university degree these days

Doesn't matter. imo Chinese people can still adapt. It's part of the culture. My family came to the US as illegal aliens with no money and poor education (their degrees weren't of much use). We still made it work. I know it's anecdotal, but there are a lot of anecdotes throughout Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa, and even in the Middle East (it was surreal when I met a Chinese guy from Saudi Arabia who was looking for a potential 7th wife).

EDIT: it wasn't easy immigrating the US in the 19th century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Chinese_sentiment_in_the_...

Don't understand why GP is downvoted. Of course Chinese people (like many others) can adapt, but how are you going into a country and stay there legally? For most people, asylum is hardly an option (though Germany has granted asylum to several leaders of the HK protests). If you don't go via asylum, you have to go via normal immigration routes, and they are normally either investment or skills based these days - you need lots of money or excellent education. You cannot just go and live in any country you want anymore (for most people).

> but how are you going into a country and stay there legally?

The same way startups figure out how to survive and eventually profit: by continuously adapting and continuously looking for opportunity. In our case, some of my relatives saved up enough "under the counter" money to pay a citizen to marry them until they were able to get a green card; after which they divorced. Others just married citizens. Others got enough education to get a work visa (I don't remember the details). You get the picture. It's a waste of time and energy, dwelling on what you don't have vs how to accomplish what you need to happen. I'm not saying that you should be ignorant of obstacles and challenges (you need to know what they are), but you need to focus on the openings & opportunities to get through. This is a generalization, but I feel that most if not all Asian cultures have this same spirit.

Here's a modern example.

https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/article/1774417/how-modern-da...

I didn't downvote anyone on this thread

Ok, that's really funny. It would never in a million years occur to me to pay someone to marry me so I could live in some country. And, yes, some recent startups have skirted or crossed the line to illegality.

My point remains - nowadays (unlike a century ago, if I'm not mistaken), the majority of people can not choose in which country to live (legally, at any rate).

The past is often romanticized, but the reality is that it was never easy.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/american-chinatowns-history_n...

I didn't say that your point was invalid. I'm just pointing out that when you're desperate enough to escape an authoritarian regime or other dangers, legality isn't as important of a consideration. There's plenty of grey areas to work in. ie if there's a will, there's a way

It wasn't exactly easier to have the money in the 19th century?

Most people in Hong Kong that are protesting don’t have a second passport. That’s why they are fighting. As for those with passports, most are still dormant even though they do support the protest.

There are ~85,000 Americans living in HK.

Many Hong Kong residents already fled for Canada years, and even decades ago before the official handover to China.

This whole situation has been a long time in the making.

As a European citizen I would really like to provide the people of Hong Kong a passport of their choosing. Our Western colonial mistakes are responsible for setting up China with this situation in HK. The best is to acknowledge our mistakes and welcome anybody that feels compromised by a Chinese annexation.

In the past the Netherlands has made a promise to the people of South Maluku a republic and independent status from Indonesia in a similar situation which in the end could not be upheld. This enfolded in to a very traumatic event where people out of desperation high jacked a train in the Netherlands to come to a solution. Some of these people where killed.

China has a righteous claim on HK and the West should not be in denial of the inevitable. Giving China the chance of restoring their geographical region while facilitating a frictionless migration for those in need would prevent in worse case scenario a war.

Asian people assimilate very well in Western societies and we can always use more people with an average IQ of 108.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_South_Maluku

> China has a righteous claim on HK

Why exactly? Modern China itself was formed from wars of imperial conquest. That these conquests by force happened long ago doesn't make them any “more righteous” than the British conquest of HK over 100 years ago.

By your logic, Germany had a “righteous claim” on Austria, Hungary, and at least parts of Poland in the late 1930s.

I kinda wish that China would switch from attempting to assimilate HK, to just seeing HKers as foreign devils that need to be kicked out of China. Because that would inevitably lead to only one thing: other countries granting refugee status to the entire HK population.

(In fact, I wonder if particular sovereign nations are already attempting psy-ops with an inculcation of this attitude in the Chinese government as their goal. It's really the only way that the population of HK "gets out" from under China's rule in one piece. Minus a city, of course...)

(Though, if we're talking "things on the CIA's to-do list", giving the CNP another chance to take China from the CCP is probably pretty high up there. Hong Kong would be perfectly content with "assimilation" under a democratic Taiwan-led China.)

Visa free travel to the US. The situation isn't that desparate yet. But I fully expect this President will toss them back into the jaws of tyranny.

HKers enjoy visa free (or VOA) travel to many countries, but entering obviously is only the very first part of the process; staying legally is the crux of the matter.

Yeah, the US is cracking down hard on asylum rights. There's been a lot of people in dire conditions--fleeing human trafficking or government oppression--turned away from the southern border and sent home in danger of their lives, because they don't check all the boxes on the extremely narrow definition that ICE is using now.

Or, you know, locked up indefinitely in a cell.

The USA is explicitly anti immigration right now, asylum or no. We can't even get people in on working visas to our SF office that have worked here before. They get arbitrarily denied.

I'm curious who's downvoting this. I didn't say anything that's not factual.

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