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Hong Kong bucks anti-immigration
trend
By Gary LaMoshi
HONG
KONG - It wasn't an ideal time to be heading to the 25th
floor of Immigration Tower to be interviewed for
permanent residency in Hong Kong. In contrast to the
rising tide of commercial globalization, immigration
officials across the world seem to be raising barriers
about who can visit and live in their countries.
Migration of capital, goods and jobs, si!
Migration of people, no!
My native
country, the United States, is in the forefront of this
unfortunate trend. In the name of homeland security
post- September 11, 2001, visitors to the US from all
but a handful of countries are fingerprinted and
photographed. No one has explained how fingerprints and
photographs of the September 11 hijackers buried among
hundreds of thousands of sets of personal data would
have prevented the World Trade Center disaster, but at
least the new rules are something the fledgling
Department of the Homeland Security can claim as a
measurable accomplishment when its budget comes up for
renewal.
I'll bet emigrating to the US these
days from one of those fingerprint countries requires
more than the peek down the throat and cursory questions
about his name and point of origin that my grandfather
faced at Ellis Island a century ago. Lady Liberty still
lifts her lamp beside the golden door, but it's mostly
locked nowadays.
Many other countries have
followed the US lead and fortified their border
controls. Here in Asia, Thailand toughened visa rules
last November, more than doubled long-term visa fees
(now above US$200) and began demanding that even holders
of one-year visas appear quarterly at immigration
offices. "The walls just got a little higher," one
correspondent in his third decade in Bangkok grumbled;
he asked that his name be withheld to avoid problems
with the authorities.
While cracking down on
tourist visa overstayers who teach English for a
pittance, Thailand has also started offering special
privilege cards for foreigners willing to pay $25,000
for golf discounts, preferred services at airport
immigration counters, and limited rights to buy land.
Workers crossing borders, legally and otherwise,
are a simmering issue around the region for both labor
importers and exporters, such as the Philippines,
Bangladesh and Indonesia. The foreign workers who build
Kuala Lumpur's gleaming towers and tend to palm
plantations create strains between Malaysia and its
neighbors. Relatively prosperous Malaysia depends on
imported labor for an estimated 20 percent of its
workforce, an estimated 2 million workers, most from
Indonesia. Concerns about terrorism and recognition that
illegal trafficking often takes place through the
labor-import system are both good things, but they also
make legitimate movements more difficult. Tough economic
times also raise the supply of foreign workers but lower
demand.
The 1997 economic crisis exacerbated
resentment among Malaysians about foreign workers - they
have jobs but I don't - then bubbled over in early 2002
when a violent clashes at labor camps led Malaysia to
clamp down on Indonesian workers. Malaysia expelled
750,000 Indonesians, many of whom wound up in squalid
border camps. The two governments spent two years
talking past each other and finally released a
memorandum of understanding after Malaysian Prime
Minister Abdullah Badawi's summit with Indonesian
President Megawati Sukarnoputri in Jakarta last month.
Vacationers are also coming under greater
scrutiny. Indonesia put its new tourist visa rules into
effect on February 1 (see Visa changes darken Bali's happy
holiday recovery, January 17). Holders of passports
from countries that supply the bulk of Indonesia's
tourists must now purchase visas at ports of entry: $25
for 30 days, $10 for three days. Others, including
citizens of several European Union countries, must
obtain a visa from an Indonesian embassy or consulate
prior to arrival. These new rules constitute an
invitation to visit Malaysia or the Philippines instead.
Hong Kong still allows easy access to visitors,
but last year it overhauled rules on immigration and
residency. Although controversies centered on mainland
Chinese who want to live in Hong Kong, non-Chinese bore
the brunt of the new regime. Immigration officers probed
more deeply for evidence that gweilos (literally,
"ghosts"; local slang for non-Chinese) had truly made
Hong Kong their permanent home. In one widely publicized
case, an examiner asked a Western applicant whether he
had a Cantonese girlfriend.
My interview posed
an equally personal, more serious question: "Have you
ever been in prison?" It turns out I neglected to check
a box next to that question on my application form. I
must have given the right answer in my interview -
wouldn't you like to know what it was - because my
application was approved. I'm now free to live and work
in Hong Kong without restriction.
I've always
been one to buck a trend, and that trait seems to have
rubbed off on my newly officially adopted home town.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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