Just Saying | The UK is peddling a citizenship pipe dream to naive Hongkongers
- Yonden Lhatoo explains why the British government’s offer to take in those from the city with BN(O) status is a political sham that will only bring grief to unwitting victims who fall for it
Just like the young Dick Whittington of English folklore who found out the hard way centuries ago that the streets of London were not in fact paved with gold, many Hongkongers getting excited over Britain’s great offer of a “pathway to citizenship” are in for bitter disappointment.
Purportedly out of overwhelming concern for the safety of their loyal former colonial subjects, the people in charge of good ol’ Blighty announced this week that they were creating a special class of visa for Hongkongers with British National (Overseas) status to help them escape the city’s terrifying new national security law.
According to official estimates from the British side, more than a million eligible Hongkongers could land on English shores in the next five years under this generous new visa scheme, half of them in the first six months after applications open at the end of January, 2021.
But how many will actually end up settling in Britain? And if they do, are they fully aware of what they’re signing up for? Because as magnanimous and warm as the offer sounds, the cold, hard reality behind it is that life in Britain looks harsh enough to make “suffering” in Hong Kong feel like a picnic.
Unemployment in Britain surged to its highest rate in more than three years at 4.5 per cent in the three months to August, with nearly 3 million people claiming out-of-work benefits in September. It’s going to be even worse, with the unemployment rate expected to hit up to 10 per cent by the end of the year as the government scales back its job protection scheme and enforces a new system of lockdowns to tackle a raging pandemic.
Imagine more than a million “refugees” from Hong Kong descending upon that job market and how all those Brits struggling to find work and make a living would react to the competition.
The new immigrants from Hong Kong will not be eligible for welfare payments, and must be able to support themselves financially for at least six months. And they will have to be self-sufficient for up to seven years before they can become citizens.
