Hong Kong, where refugees are trapped in ‘legal limbo,’ shows why anti-refugee policies don’t work

HONG KONG—When he left his country for Hong Kong, fleeing political persecution, Victor thought he had escaped the worst of his troubles. Instead, he’s now trapped in a system that prevents him from working, gives him meagre government assistance, and calls him an “illegal immigrant.” “It’s a shit situation,” said Victor, a short, bald Eastern European refugee. (Like other refugees interviewed, he didn’t want to say his exact country out of fear that his government would find him. And his name has been changed.) Across the world, the influx of refugees from Syria and other countries has emboldened anti-refugee politicians to call for halting refugee resettlement. In the U.S., a growing number of politicians—led by presidential candidate Donald Trump—are calling for stopping Syrian refugees or even ending our refugee resettlement program altogether. Hong Kong’s system provides a troubling case study of what that might look like if these anti-refugee activists got their way. The territory, a former British colony that’s part of China but has its own immigration policies, has a unique stance on refugees. It’s one of the only developed jurisdictions in the world that hasn’t signed on to the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention. That means that refugees here aren’t granted any… Read full this story

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