The UK Is Truly Sneaky Towards Hong Kong Migrants

The devil really is in the details, and the UK’s latest immigration consultation shows just how ruthless London can be when it wants to shut the door without saying so out loud.

Last Thursday (20 November), the UK Home Office rolled out what it bills as the biggest immigration shake‑up in half a century, a “earned settlement” overhaul designed to slash migrant numbers and drag out the road to permanent residency from five years to as long as twenty.

First, around two million legal migrants who have arrived in the UK since 2021 will see their settlement bar raised from five to ten years, instantly doubling their wait.

Second, some 610,000 people who previously entered on health and social care visas, along with their families, will be pushed onto a 15‑year track before they can even dream of permanent status.

Third, legal migrants who depend on welfare, together with asylum seekers, are shoved to the back of the queue with a brutal 20‑year wait.

BN(O) Route: Carrot Up Front, Stick Behind

The Home Office then stresses that those who moved to the UK under the Hong Kong BN(O) visa route will not face further consultation on their existing “5+1” settlement path, which sounds generous at first glance.

First of all, the English language and tax requirements for BN(O) migrants.

Dig into the mandatory conditions and the trap becomes obvious: settlement applicants must now hit English level B2, have a clean criminal record, and show no unpaid taxes, no outstanding National Health Service bills or other government debts.

Previously, the bar was B1 – roughly GCSE level, similar to Hong Kong’s old Form Five HKCEE English – but B2 is closer to the old Form Seven A‑level standard, meaning applicants must speak comfortably and write clear, well‑structured English essays.

This B2 bar actually sits above today’s HKDSE (Form Six) English level in Hong Kong, and in practice it is like demanding a pass in A‑level English – something even top students did not always manage back in the A‑level era.

The writer remembers a science‑stream friend who scored straight As in three science A‑levels but failed English and therefore could not use that stellar record to apply to the University of Hong Kong – a classic example of how even high‑flyers, especially in science, might fall short of B2, let alone ordinary Hong Kong people.

If the UK really enforces B2 to the letter, most Hong Kong BN(O) migrants could simply slam into the language wall, and how tough this rule becomes will depend entirely on how the government of the day decides to play it.

On top of that, the consultation says every settlement applicant must, for each of the past three to five years, earn more than £12,570 a year – around HK$128,000 – the UK personal tax allowance level, and show matching National Insurance or tax records.

That immediately creates a built‑in trap: if a couple emigrates and only one spouse works, the non‑working partner fails the individual income rule on day one.

So Hong Kong people should not hear that the Home Office is “keeping the 5+1 BN(O) route” and naively assume London is being kind; how many can actually clear these hard language and income bars is anyone’s guess, but large numbers of elderly parents who followed their children to the UK almost certainly cannot.

Asylum Hope Turned Into A 20‑Year Tunnel

Let’s look at point number two: political asylum applications pushed into the distant future.

Under the new UK blueprint, asylum seekers are pushed onto a 20‑year track before they can settle – a timeline so long it is effectively a life sentence of uncertainty.

After 2019, many people people who were not born in Hong Kong and therefore did not hold BN(O) passports – and could not get on the BN(O) bandwagon – chose to claim political asylum in the UK instead, citing their involvement in the 2019 riots, and now they find themselves sucked into a dark 20‑year vortex.

Even for those who left for the UK immediately in 2019, a 20‑year wait runs to 2039, and no one can predict what kind of world they will be facing by then.

The bigger sting is that the Home Office openly states that if it decides the asylum seeker’s place of origin no longer faces political persecution, it will order that person out, meaning that the authority has the the power to deport hangs over them at all times.

Reading this Labour government consultation paper, it is hard not to conclude that the British approach is genuinely devious.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is preparing to visit China and clearly would not want to  provoke Beijing, which helps explain why London has been stalling since 2018 on China’s vast “super embassy” plan in the UK – a project that reports now say Starmer is finally set to approve.

On BN(O), Starmer wouldn’t risk provoking China either. Thus, under fierce lobbying from various Hong Kong opposition groups in the UK, he has devised this neat trick: on paper, he keeps the “5+1” unchanged, but in practice Hong Kong migrants are boxed in by tighter language and income rules, while asylum seekers are locked into 20‑year temporary status.

When Starmer sits down with the Chinese leadership, he can claim he has done his utmost to clamp down on Hong Kong people’s settlement bids; when he meets their representatives in the UK, he can say he has fought hard to preserve their “5+1” route.

Britain’s Promise Comes With An Asterisk

The UK has a long record of breaking its word, starting from the days it handed out 50,000 right‑of‑abode passports to Hong Kong people and their dependants.

Later, many right‑of‑abode holders did not go to Britain themselves but sent their children there to study, and because right of abode came as a full British passport, those children could pay local tuition fees.

Then, without warning, the UK government simply rewrote the rules, demanding that all such parents must have paid UK taxes for two years before their children could enjoy home‑student status.

In Britain, nobody ever seems to answer for all that moral grandstanding; take their word at face value and don’t be surprised when it blows up in your face.

Lo Wing-hung

Bastille Commentary

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

As the election day gets closer, the volume from the rumour mill and smear campaigns is clearly being turned up.

Among the latest claims doing the rounds is a story that a company is paying HK$150 per head to “hire voters” for the Legislative Council election on December 7,  and even demanding they take photos as proof after casting their ballots, which has triggered a wave of anti-government comments online.

In response, the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the CPG in the HKSAR has issued its third statement on the matter, stressing that certain people inside and outside Hong Kong keep changing tactics in order to smear the Legislative Council election.

A spokesperson for the Office pointed out that some anti‑China, destablising-Hong Kong elements and internal forces have not abandoned their malicious intentions or wicked ambitions,  and are still openly and covertly inciting people to boycott the election and stirring up disruptive activities both online and offline.

The Office has made clear it will take a zero‑tolerance approach in defending national security and, in accordance with the law, will severely punish any acts or activities that interfere with or sabotage the election and endanger national security.

Looking carefully at the online posts, it is obvious that the National Security Office’s statement hits the target.

Take the above‑mentioned post about so‑called “paid voting”, offering HK$150 per person to get people to vote and then take a photo as evidence – its source was unclear and the whole setup was already rather bizarre from the start.

Twisting “Paid Voting” Into a Weapon

When the media asked the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) about this, its spokesperson explained that the activity was purely to promote the election, without inducing voters to vote or not vote for particular candidates, and therefore it is not restricted by the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance.

At the same time, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data reminded the public to first find out the purpose of any data collection and to pay attention to whether the related information is genuine.

Yet on the forums where this piece of news was reposted, some comments seized the chance to add fuel to the fire and attack the government, while others simply fabricated rumours.

One example was a comment claiming that “According to Section 11 of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance, any person who, without reasonable excuse, offers a benefit to another person to induce or reward that person or a third party to vote or not to vote in an election commits an offence.”

As soon as this post appeared, it encouraged many people to rush out and condemn the government and the ICAC, arguing that since the ordinance “clearly” bans offering benefits to induce others to vote, how could the ICAC possibly say that encouraging voting is not restricted by the law.

However, simply checking Section 11 of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance is enough to show that its content is completely different from what the commenter wrote.

Section 11 targets corrupt conduct involving bribery of voters or others in an election, and makes it an offence for any person, without reasonable excuse, to offer a benefit to another person as an inducement for that person to vote for a particular candidate.

When Fake Law Becomes a Political Tool

In reality, Section 11 is about “offers an advantage to another person as an inducement to vote at the election for a particular candidate or particular candidates”, not “offering a benefit to another person to vote” in general.

The commenter deliberately rewrote the law, changing its original ban on offering benefits to get people “to vote for a particular candidate” into a supposed ban on offering benefits just to get people “to vote”, which is an obvious attempt to manufacture a rumour.

That comment then triggered a flood of insults against the ICAC.

In fact, this kind of deliberate fabrication of legal content is already suspected of breaching the offence of seditious intention under Article 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

Article 24 makes clear that a seditious intention includes the intention to incite hatred or contempt against the executive, legislative or judicial authorities of the HKSAR.

By inventing the content of the ordinance and then accusing the ICAC of failing to enforce the law, the commenter stirs up hatred against the ICAC and is therefore suspected of committing the offence of seditious intention.

Are the flood of specious messages appearing online, the doctored legal provisions and the calls to hate the government and to refuse to vote on December 7 just casual off‑the‑cuff remarks, or are they deliberate acts of incitement?

Don’t Play With Legal Fire Online

Even if an ordinary person wanted to criticise the government, it is unlikely they would spend the time and effort to rewrite the content of the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance, which makes this behaviour particularly suspicious.

Now that the National Security Office has spoken out in advance and warned that it will, in accordance with the law, severely punish all acts intended to interfere with or sabotage the election, this already serves as a serious and timely warning.

These individuals are intentionally spreading false information aimed squarely at the election, and it is highly likely that the posters or commenters are not physically in Hong Kong.

They maliciously attack the city’s system while confidently assuming the government will find it hard to hold them to account.

The real problem is that if any people in Hong Kong foolishly forward such content online, and even call on others to attack the government or boycott the election by refusing to vote, they can very easily end up breaking the law.

Clearly, attempts to attack Hong Kong’s election are no simple matter, and others should not casually chime in and “test the law by themselves”.

Lo Wing-hung