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Letters | Why Hong Kong should offer cash handouts to non-local students and ease immigration rules
- Granting a partial refund on tuition fees, to make up for class disruption due to the protests and coronavirus outbreak, is a good suggestion, but would not go far enough
- Non-local students would also need to stay on longer to find a job amid a recession
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We refer to the March 17 letter from Mengyuan Li and Zheqi Yan, calling for partial tuition fee refunds on behalf of self-financed master’s students, who lost a significant amount of time on campus due to the extradition bill protests and the coronavirus outbreak.
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In addition to financial compensation from the universities, we believe the Hong Kong government should also do more to help non-local university students with cash handouts and more flexible immigration arrangements.
As your correspondent Marina Sáenz rightly points out (“Hong Kong budget: why non-permanent residents deserve the HK$10,000 handout too”, March 2), non-local students should also be given HK$10,000. Many of us were forced to leave the city during the protests and had to pay rent for unoccupied flats. Some of us were also stranded on the mainland amid the coronavirus crisis.
But it’s not just about financial relief. The cash handout scheme, which was recently extended to cover some non-permanent residents, should include all contributing members of Hong Kong society. We should be treated like everyone else in this difficult time.
Immigration rules should also be relaxed. Under the current arrangements, those who apply to stay and work in Hong Kong within six months of graduation may spend 12 months here to look for a job as “non-local fresh graduates”. If it is after six months, we have to secure an offer of employment in Hong Kong before coming back as “returning non-local graduates”.
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