“The Chinese government is basically saying if you want to continue to live and work in Hong Kong, you’re going to have to make a choice,” Hyman said.
In the 1990s, a wave of middle-class and wealthy Hong Kong residents moved to Canada and obtained passports, but many returned to their homeland. There are fewer people from Hong Kong living in Canada in recent years (about 215,000) than there were in 1996 (241,000).
Greater Toronto has 100,000. Metro Vancouver, with 71,000, has the most Hong Kong-born residents per capita outside of East Asia.
If full-time residents of Hong Kong with Canadian passports end up being treated like foreigners, Lee said, they would lose certain rights to owning property and would have to regularly report to officials for work visas.
There is also a distinct chance, Lee said, that a person who tries to enter any region controlled by China with a Chinese passport, while also being found to secretly hold one from Canada or another country, could be arrested.
Even though holding a Canadian passport is supposed to offer people diplomatic protection, observers say China’s officials are increasingly treating someone as a Chinese citizen based simply on their ethnicity and family history.
China has recently jailed Hong-Kong residents who thought they were protected by their Canadian passports, including billionaire Xiao Jianhua and Falun Gong practitioner Sun Qian. Many of those arrested renounced their Canadian citizenship, reportedly under duress.
It’s hard to predict how many will turn their back on Canadian citizenship in order to stay in Hong Kong, agreed Lee and Hyman.
For many, Hyman said, it would mean giving up a lifestyle as transnational migrants — people who travel back and forth between countries doing business and buying real estate, but with varying degrees of loyalty to each place.
Many Hong Kong residents, Hyman said, obtained Canadian passports in the 1990s because they wanted to feel they had a haven, including for property, in the event China failed to live up to its commitment to give Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy until 2047.
“For many a Canadian passport was their fallback position,” Hyman said.
An Asia-Pacific Foundation poll found the majority of people holding Canadian passports in Hong Kong had only lived in Canada for four or five years. Many did not tell Chinese authorities they had a second citizenship.
The study found 46 per cent considered Canada their home “sometimes” or “all the time.” But 37 per cent of Hong Kong-born Canadians stated they would “never” consider Canada home. The survey was conducted before democracy protests swept Hong Kong in 2019-20, which caused China to arrest many activists and impose much more severe restrictions.
Even though Hyman considers China a “rogue” nation, the immigration lawyer said its move to extend its long-standing ban on dual citizenship over Hong Kong is in some ways not dissimilar to many European countries, which also don’t permit more than one passport. Canada, he said, only began approving them in 1977 and the U.S. in 1990.
Many Hong Kong residents have favoured Canada as destination of choice because of its generous and relatively undemanding approach to immigrants, Hyman said, including minimal requirements about residing in the country.
And, unlike the U.S., say Hyman and Lesperance, Canada does not impose tax on citizens based merely on their nationality.
Canada contains more residents with roots in Hong Kong than any region outside Asia: 215,000. In contrast there are about 200,000 Hong Kong immigrants in the much larger U.S., 96,000 in Britain and 87,000 in Australia.
Source: Douglas Todd: China drops hammer on Hong Kong residents holding Canadian passports
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Multicultural Meanderings 