‘The Best-Educated, Most Highly Skilled and Productive Immigrants Any Country Could Ask For’
For many reasons, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s reaching out to Hong Kong citizens who are living in Australia is the right thing to do.
For many reasons, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s reaching out to Hong Kong citizens who are living in Australia is the right thing to do.
Extending visas to Hong Kong citizens who are already in Australia will save those people from compulsory return to a country increasingly bullied and repressed by China.
Under the changed rules, temporary work visa holders and student visa holders currently in Australia will have their visas extended.
They will also be allowed to apply for permanent residency after their visas have expired.
The correctness of this move is confirmed by the fact that China’s dictatorship opposes it.
China now accuses Australia of “a serious violation of international law and basic norms governing international relations, and a gross interference in China’s internal affairs”.
According to the Chinese embassy: “Hong Kong affairs are China’s internal affairs.”
Many tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents disagree, which is why they have risked so much in protests against China’s authoritarian crackdowns.
One aspect of those crackdowns is especially telling. It is now illegal in Hong Kong to boo during the Chinese national anthem. This new law was introduced to criminalise the standard response of Hong Kong soccer fans to the anthem during local matches.
Australia is now also looking at ways to attract Hong Kong businesses to our country. Every possible effort should be made to support this.
Australia is presently in a behind-the-scenes struggle with Britain to attract the best and most energetic of Hong Kong’s famously creative and entrepreneurial business people.
“It’s hard to argue that there would be any problem in settling the Hong Kong Chinese, the best-educated and most highly skilled and productive immigrants any country could ask for,” political journalist Fraser Nelson wrote last month in British magazine The Spectator.
Australia may have an edge over the UK. As Nelson admits:
“Britain is at a distinct disadvantage. The Foreign Office has calculated that those leaving Hong Kong are more likely to go to countries with a large diaspora – Canada and Australia score strongly on this front, having acted to take in tens of thousands when Britain did not.”
Drive that advantage hard. We want and need Hong Kong Chinese in Australia.
(This morning’s Daily Telegraph editorial.)
UPDATE. Hands off. They're all ours:
Map of countries putting forward offers of support to Hong Kong residents pic.twitter.com/PkbmcbI0Wp
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 10, 2020