From today’s SCMP:

The government is trying to enter as evidence estimates that “great numbers” of Filipino maids would become permanent Hong Kong residents in its fight against foreign domestic workers who are seeking right of abode.

But a High Court judge called an impromptu hearing yesterday to ask the government why it had applied to file new evidence only weeks before a judicial review begins.

Last week the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong released figures that said the city’s unemployment rate would rise to 10 per cent, from the current 3.5 per cent, if the maids prevailed in their effort for permanent residency. The party cited a government estimate that 500,000 people could settle in Hong Kong, costing an extra HK$25 billion a year in social spending, if domestic workers were granted permanent residence.

Nowhere have I read what this estimate is based on, neither the number 500,000 people (most of whom presumably are already here) or the average spending of HK$50,000 per person.  It also ignores the possibility that at least some of these people would be paying taxes.

Hemlock noted today:

Could it be that the government, aided by its vote-mongering supporters in the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment etc of HK, is stirring up racism and alarm as a way of diverting people’s attention from the abysmal failure of nearly everything else it does? This would, in fairness, bring it into line with just about every other government on the planet at some time or another. Or is it wetting itself about a theoretical inundation of dark-skinned hordes because blind panic is its default reaction to almost anything?

It would be interesting to know what has made the DAB so interested in this issue. As the local front of the Chinese Communist Party, it follows orders rather than sets agendas. It pushes the interests of the local less-educated working class, insofar as these are compatible with its higher cause, and stresses nationalism and disdain for the sort of cosmopolitanism common among the pro-democracy middle class.

Colonialism probably deserves some of the blame here. Many decades ago, the Chinese were second-class citizens in Hong Kong, and – as in the Mainland – there is still something of an inferiority complex. The elite feel inadequate without Jockey Club membership, appointment as Justice of the Peace or other idiotic British baubles. The underclass, like the white trash in the UK or the US, need someone to look down on, and Third World maids are ideal. The prospect of legitimizing these people and letting them compete in the workplace provokes hostility because of insecurity. Filipinos might have more than just an economic edge on local counterparts. The real fear is not that maids’ relatives would come over and claim welfare, but that their relatives would come over waving fancy nursing degrees and other credentials, leaving Hong Kong’s dropouts and rejects in the dust. Racial superiority meets humiliating truth.

Article 24 of the Basic Law states, in part, “The permanent residents of the HKSAR shall be … (4) Persons not of Chinese nationality who have entered Hong Kong with valid travel documents, have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years and have taken Hong Kong as their place of permanent residence …”  It does not say “except for XXX.”

Article 25 states, “All Hong Kong residents shall be equal before the law.”

Article 39 states, “The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and international labour conventions as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force and shall be implemented through the laws of the HKSAR.”

Full stop.  There may be those in Hong Kong who “do not want them here” and you are of course entitled to your opinion but there is no legal or ethical basis for denying them resident status if they otherwise qualify for it.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson said:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

 

 

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