Not content with the return of thousands of Hong Kong emigrants who have poured out of Vancouver since the handover, the SAR government now wants their kids, too.
The announcement by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying in last week’s policy address that the overseas children of Hong Kong permanent residents would be able to apply for one-year visas to allow them to look for work in the SAR has the potential to escalate the westward flow. But will it?
Reverse migration is a phenomenon that has already seen the Hong Kong-born population in greater Vancouver fall by 14 per cent, from 86,215 in 1996 to 73,770 in 2011. Yet the exodus has been far more extreme than that census data suggests, since there were around 20,500 arrivals in Vancouver from Hong Kong in the same period.
In other words, about 33,000 Hongkongers departed Vancouver in those 15 years (including deaths). What’s more, arrivals are now a mere trickle - in 2013, there were only 383 new Hong Kong immigrants for all of British Columbia..
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