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Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#321

Post by Veen »

dragonwriter wrote: post #318
Veen wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is not weighting Asians higher than other non-white races. It’s favouring people from the Commonwealth and others to whom we have historical commitments above countries where no such ties exist.

> The UK is not weighting Asians higher than other non-white races. I didn't say it was. I said that the upthread commenter’s use of “differential racism” to describe their explanation in which Britain was doing that was, contrary to the claim that it was redefining “racism”, a perfectly valid use of the term “racism”. I've also said in every post in which I've argued that point that I think that what is actually hap…

The explanation is the obvious one. The UK has a treaty with China intended to prevent what is happening from happening. China is in breach of the treaty and, in light of that, the UK is acting to protect people to whom it believes it has an obligation. It has nothing to do with either racism or nationalism.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#322

Post by starfallg »

genoapol wrote: post #316
genoapol wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just because China is able to catch-up some of the growth that it completely missed out on due to the turmoil of the Communist revolution and the turbulent 50s and 60s, doesn't validate this system one bit. Other countries were ahead of China, with more growth and sustainability, minus the cruelty. The most powerful countries in the world were literally coasting on stolen Chinese wealth for 100 years of so. When the…

>doesn't validate this system one bit. . India springs to mind as a good 1:1 comparison candidate and it seems to be doing much worse than China in most economic metrics.

Was India next to a financial hub like Hong Kong and a electronics and manufacturing hub like Taiwan that rapidly industrialised in the 60s and 70s? India is also further positioned from the Pacific and the sea routes to the US market, but that's a secondary reason, not the primary one.

Just because they both have large populations don't make them alike.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#323

Post by Auracle »

runawaybottle wrote: post #146
akie wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a problem with Europeans coming over as well.

That’s not what rallied Brexit. The right riled up people with “scary” immigration, the same way “scary” Mexican immigration was used by Trump. But hey, Hong Kongers are “better” immigrants. We can all see through this I hope.

I don’t think it’s wrong to prefer to have educated immigrants over non-educated. One creates wealth and resources and the other drains it. One is more likely to be law abiding and the other less likely. If Wakanda existed I doubt there would be much opposition to letting their citizens immigrate.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#324

Post by dragonwriter »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #255
dragonwriter wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While China is obviously much more powerful than Guatemala, China isn't just more powerful than Guatemala, it's more powerful than the UK. > they still wouldn't have been able to invade given that it would have caused a nuclear war. If Deng Xiaoping really thought the UK would accept nuclear ese as the cost of keeping China out of HK, sure, that might have kept China out. But literally no one would believe that.

They haven't invaded Taiwan with the US providing an even less direct security guarantee. The USA previously had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. That was replaced by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. "The Taiwan Relations Act does not guarantee the USA will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan nor does it relinquish it, as its primary purpose is to ensure the US's Taiwan policy will not be c…

> Furthermore, while China is more powerful than the UK, in 1997 the UK had a larger GDP

Which, while it could reasonably have been taken as an indication of the capacity to generate power over the long term if that advantage was preserved, has pretty much nothing to do with immediate power of the relevant type, whether globally or, more to the point, locally applicable to HK. Which, actually, creates more of an incentive for China to fully exploit it's then-current power advantage.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#325

Post by vanekjar »

99_00 wrote: post #198

I live in Vancouver. The pattern for many Hong Kong immigrants is to have the mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada. So they enjoy the benefits of a low tax HK income. And they get all the nice things that go with living in high tax Canada while not contributing to it -free healthcare, subsided University, safe communities, clean enviro…

> mother and children live in Canada while the father works in HK.The family doesn't declare the foreign income in Canada.

Why would the father pay taxes in Canada when he lives and works in HK (or anywhere else) and (likely) is not a Canadian tax resident? It doesn't make any sense.

After all they pay local taxes in Canada while spending (GST, PST, property tax etc.)

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#326

Post by spacehunt »

spuz wrote: post #58
dan1234 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quick Google would tell you the population of Hong Kong is 7,500,700 (2019 estimate).

The point is that from a journalistic point of view the number of people eligible for citizenship is meaningless without the context of either the population of Hong Kong or of the UK or perhaps the number of immigrants the UK typically sees from Hong Kong and other countries. It's very common in articles to see numbers that have no meaning without context. Either the context should be provided or the numbers should…

But even the Home Office doesn't know the exact number.

They know how many current BN(O) holders there are. But they don't know how many are eligible exactly -- they have the entire list of people who have received one, but that's over 20 years ago, and a lot could have happened to them since.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#327

Post by magicsmoke »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #281
harikb wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether UK citizens approve this or not, logistical challenge of making this happen is immense. I think UK politicians know this is just a threat. Moving people & jobs physically to UK, when people have physical investment in a house, school, bank accounts, investments is not easy. I can see people moving if CCP is literally killing non-protesting citizens like holocaust. On top of it, what is to prevent CCP from blo…

One of the major phenomena of Hong Kong in the 1980s and early 1990s was families getting out if they could afford it, because everyone was nervous about the Chinese handover. This wave of emigration even plays a role in contemporary Hong Kong film of the era like Chungking Express . And even before the fears of the handover, many educated HKers were emigrating to the US for the sake of higher wages. Yes, HKers have…

Most HKers are descended from mainland Chinese that crossed the border after WW2 in the 50s and 60s. Just mirroring their ancestor's footsteps.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#328

Post by foogazi »

mistermann wrote: post #287
numakerg wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then shouldn't the government be closing this loophole and taxing whatever vehicle they use to transfer wealth? I'd criticize an individual for evading taxes, but a "group" of people is just doing what people do. EDIT: If you want to talk about the "functional" value of immigrants, then you need to get to the root purpose and bring in whoever is having the most kids.

Legislation that has any kind of a racial (or perceived to be racial) aspect to it cannot really be discussed freely. Even though closing such loopholes may be perfectly legitimate, if exploitation of the loophole happens to correlate to a racially identifiable group, in the current age of social media based hyper propaganda it is a very dangerous political move for a career politician (or their party) to touch.

Is that why they have not closed the loophole or are you speculating?

Weren’t they talking about taxing vacant properties in Vancouver recently? Was there social media backlash?

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#329

Post by OJFord »

LatteLazy wrote: post #119

No, only to a tiny subset of HK residents on a very arbitrary basis, specifically excluding anyone under 23 (so most protestors) and any child (so most people who don't want to literally abandon their kids).

Dependents are allowed, they just wouldn't be on their own application.

Re: Hong Kong: UK makes citizenship offer to residents

#330

Post by magicsmoke »

woodpanel wrote: post #236
magicsmoke wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assimilation means the next generation won't be willing to fight the the memories of a HK half a world and century away. Also, most of the Asian diaspora in the anglophone sphere assimilate simply because there's not enough population, not because of some special cultural quality. 5% of the US is Asian American, and that's divided among all the different Asian nations. The Asian diaspora in Southeast Asia do a much b…

Assimilation means the next generation won't be willing to fight the the memories of a HK half a world and century away. But it doesn't mean they are forgetting about their ancestors struggle or their heritage either. not because of some special cultural quality It could easily transcribed as education , no need to imply cultural patronzing.

If by remembering their heritage you mean how half the US remembers they're 1/16 Irish only when St. Patrick's day rolls around, then yes.

HK is in a catch-22. Stay where they are and get absorbed into the Mandarin speaking behemoth that's mainland China like Hakka, Wu, and Hokkien speakers once the CCP starts tearing down border and population movement restrictions, or move abroad to a dozen different countries and be absorbed piecemeal into the Anglosphere. The third option would be for 1 million or so HKers to build a new city somewhere where they could be the dominant culture. Unfortunately, Singapore is a very unusual case in world history where Malaysia didn't care about sovereignty over the land Singapore stood on and actually forced them out. Very little chance of that happening a second time.

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