At least 807 Hong Kongers have fled Hong Kong due to political persecution
as of October 25, 2021
Since mass protests began in Hong Kong on June 9, 2019, at least 807 Hong Kongers have fled Hong Kong due to political persecution, with the most applying for asylum in Australia (305), the United Kingdom (166) and Canada (49), and over 200 reported to have sought refuge in Taiwan, which does not have a formal asylum system.
This category of people who have fled Hong Kong due to experienced or feared political persecution directed against themselves as individuals is different from the more general category of emigration from Hong Kong, most of which has occurred recently due to the deteriorating political situation. Indeed, there are signs of a mass emigration underway. It is estimated that the number of Hong Kong emigrants will ultimately reach into the hundreds of thousands, with the UK alone expecting as many as 300,000. As of June 30, 2021, 64,900 Hong Kong people had applied for BN(O) visas to the UK and 43,000 applications had been approved. In 2020, a record number of 10,800 Hong Kong people received residence permits in Taiwan. In the period from mid-2020 to mid-2021, the Hong Kong population dropped 1.2% to 7.39 million, with 89,200 people having left Hong Kong. In the decade leading up to the 1997 handover, an estimated 503,800 Hong Kong people emigrated — nearly 9% of the population at the time, with 335,000 ending up in Canada alone. It’s unclear whether the current wave of emigration will reach that level, but it is possible.
So far, while 547 Hong Kongers are on record as having applied for asylum in seven different countries, there are only 32 confirmed cases of Hong Kongers having been granted asylum. There are no confirmed cases of applications having been rejected. It is therefore most likely that the vast majority of those applications are still undergoing consideration. It is not uncommon for asylum applications to take years. Most countries’ asylum policies seem as much designed around discouraging such applications as ensuring the safety and adequate care of those seeking asylum. The evidence so far is that only well-known figures from Hong Kong are having their asylum applications quickly processed while the rest languish.
More than 200 Hong Kong people are estimated to have fled to Taiwan due to persecution, but this appears to be a very rough estimate. The Taiwanese government keeps no records of the number of Hong Kong people who have arrived as political refugees, or at least none that it publishes. Taiwan has no formal asylum system, so those who go there have to find other ways of normalizing their immigration status, for example by getting student or work visas or buying enough assets in Taiwan to qualify for entrepreneur visas. Taiwan appeared initially welcoming to Hong Kong refugees, but more recently the government seems more concerned about unnecessarily provoking the Chinese Communist Party and inadvertently admitting CCP spies. It has on occasion gently suggested that some higher-profile figures from Hong Kong either remain silent while in Taiwan or, even better, leave, and it has cooperated with the US to move Hong Kong refugees from Taiwan to the US.
The United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have all liberalized some parts of their immigration policies in regard to Hong Kong. The UK’s BN(O) visa scheme is, in particular, an extraordinarily expansive program. Canada and Australia have made it easier for certain classes of Hong Kong people — generally, the more highly educated and highly skilled — , to live and work in those countries. But no country has so far taken steps to change its policy to improve protections of political refugees from Hong Kong.
The United States is the country that has come the closest. But in December 2020, when The Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act (H.R. 8428) came before the Senate for passage by unanimous consent, after having passed a similar voice vote in the House, a single senator, Ted Cruz, blocked it. Both an updated version of The Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act in the House and an updated version of the Hong Kong Safe Harbor Act in the Senate are before the current session of Congress, but the bills are languishing, having made virtually no progress toward passage. In the meantime, President Biden has signed an order granting Hong Kongers currently residing in the United States temporary safe haven for 18 months, until February 5, 2023. UPDATE: On November 11, an amendment was tabled in the UK parliament to grant Hong Kongers 18 to 24 years old access to the UK’s lifeboat scheme, as long as they have at least one parent eligible for the BN(O) visa. As it stands, people in that age group are only eligible if they are dependents or part of the household of someone eligible for a BN(O) visa. This would still exclude those whose families are not eligible, but would have the effect of providing an option for young people at risk of prosecuted who are eligible.
As it stands, for those fleeing Hong Kong due to persecution, the easiest and swiftest path is to go to the UK under the BN(O) visa scheme as long is one is eligible, which many are not, including all those under the age of 24 (except as dependents).
While some may argue that Hong Kong asylum applicants should expect no better treatment than refugees from other places around the world, it also appears to be the case that the rhetorical support for the Hong Kong freedom struggle in some democratic countries is not always matched by concrete policy support when people need it most.
