C.Y. Leung promises to ban mainland mothers

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evgreen

Registered User
http://rthk.hk/rthk/news/englishnews/20120416/news_20120416_56_833566.htm

It's a slippery slope and it infuriates me! It's easy to ride on the public's anti-mainland sentiment to boost your popularity rating. It's easy to say - let's ban them and deny them residency rights! The truth is, what Hong Kong needs is more hospital beds and more staff in the long run and this takes immense planning. Hong Kong's birth rate is one of the lowest in the world and the only way to stay on the upward trend is to welcome immigration and naturalization. Who's to say that other non-Hong Kongers won't be revoked of the same rights next?

Excuse my French, but isn't this chicken s***just taking the easy way out?
 
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Hong Kong is pretty crowded at the moment. I am not sure why we need the population to stay on an upward trend, indeed it might be a lot better for residents if the net migration was reversed and the population here started to drop?
 
evgreen said:
The truth is, what Hong Kong needs is more hospital beds and more staff in the long run and this takes immense planning. Hong Kong's birth rate is one of the lowest in the world and the only way to stay on the upward trend is to welcome immigration and naturalization. Who's to say that other non-Hong Kongers won't be revoked of the same rights next?
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I honestly don't agree. Immigration and naturalization are fine, but there are ways to do that other than letting mainland mothers give birth here - for example increase the number of immigrants eligible for the QMAS scheme or implement a similar policy for mainland residents. HK currently has adequate hospital beds for its own residents - the issue is entirely with non-residents being permitted to give birth here. Other countries don't allow non-residents without residency visas or other rights to show up and have babies and I don't think HK should be any different. Encourage immigration through other policies and then let the legal residents have their own kids here. Under the current policy, mainland kids born in HK will have the right to return when they are 18 - but HK won't have an influence on what education, etc. they have before returning to HK and there is a real risk of undereducated and underskilled young adults relocating to HK and automatically being eligible for public benefits that are better that what they would get in mainland China without contributing significantly to the economy.
 
they are making exceptions for wives of permanent residents, as they should... but really, i don't see why hk should allow people to come here just to give birth...and then to be expected to allow those same people to return and make use of the rest of the social net, local education etc...

evgreen said:
http://rthk.hk/rthk/news/englishnews/20120416/news_20120416_56_833566.htm

It's a slippery slope and it infuriates me! It's easy to ride on the public's anti-mainland sentiment to boost your popularity rating. It's easy to say - let's ban them and deny them residency rights! The truth is, what Hong Kong needs is more hospital beds and more staff in the long run and this takes immense planning. Hong Kong's birth rate is one of the lowest in the world and the only way to stay on the upward trend is to welcome immigration and naturalization. Who's to say that other non-Hong Kongers won't be revoked of the same rights next?

Excuse my French, but isn't this chicken s***just taking the easy way out?
Click to expand...
 
My position on this is:
1. Wives of Hong Kong men should be allowed to give birth here. It is really sad that wives of other nationalities can give birth here but if the wife happens to be a mainlander she gets put in other category.
2. Something needs to be done to curb mainland women flooding here to give birth in public hospitals in particular. I think the main draw is residency and tackling that is the only way to stop the flood. I read research once that found that many of the mainland children born here don't really come back to contribute as young adults so it seems like an ineffective way of tackling the aging population problem. Securing quality immigration later on might be the way to go as elle suggested.
3. My concern with ordering private hospitals not to accept mainland women is that it seems like a slippery slope. How can the government dictate who the clients of a private enterprise should not be? And is is legally ok to ban just one nationality of private clients.
 
Hong kong's aging population is a cause for concern. Coupled with a low birth rate, this spells disaster for the government which they cannot support. Public healthcare is practically free - for now. The trend of public finances,however, cannot keep it that way for very much longer. Yes, there are a lot of people in HK, and a disproportionate percentage of that is over 65...within 20 years, they will be 25% of HK's population. Encouraging immigration and naturalization is one way to cope with this. In addition, a reform of hong kong's welfare and healthcare system is needed to tackle the issue. Saying a blanket statement that mainland mothers should be banned from giving birth is the easy way out and does not address the deeper seated issues which we are facing and will face in the long term.
 
Charade, you have some very valid points. The draw to hong kong hospitals is not only the issue of residency, but also the knock effect of china's one child policy and overall better healthcare in HK.
 
Immigration into Hong Kong should be controlled. There should be a way for the government to choose who gets to immigrate to HK. The problem with Mainland mothers giving birth here and their kids automatically getting HK residency is that we have no control on who gets HK residency whatsoever - as long as the babies are born in HK, they get permanent residency. And it's not true that they are only permitted to come back when they're 18. They're permitted to stay here and receive education / welfare as soon as they're born. Many already cross the boarders every day to go to kindergartens / primary schools (over 10,000). "Birth tourism" should not be how we regulate immigration, because that's like no regulation at all.

Also, only Mainland parents whose kids are born in HK can get HK permanent residency at birth. Foreign parents' kids cannot. So, the problem is focused on Mainland parents.
 
Medical tourism is one thing. People travel all over for medical reasons but they don't get citizenship or residency in a country just because they give birth there. So, sure, let the Mainland women (or women from all over) come to Hong Kong to give birth if they want to contribute to the economy in that way. Let them pay top dollar for medical care. But, don't grant them residency just because they darken the city gates. Totally different situation with Hong Kong men married to Mainland women--in that case the men should apply for dependent residency for their wives. However because of immigration fraud, I can understand why there are quotas and wait-times. It's the same in North America--it's not always easy to get into a country just because you're married to a person from there--especially if your particular place of origin has a high incidence of immigration fraud.

Anyway. I'm not upset about the intent of C.Y. Leung's proposal--it should be tempered with long-term plans to come up with a solution to the city's population and medical services needs, though.
 
it's quite sad that hk's legislation system seems to be so short sighted most of the time. i hope this changes soon.
 
I don't have a problem with his position at all. Mainland women are being singled out precisely because they're the ones that are causing the problems. Whole hospitals are being planned and built on the 'promise' of the 'mainlander mother'industry..it's ridiculous. Hong Kong needs to look after its residents first and foremost and social planning must take account of its citizens. I am sure there are enough hospital beds for the resident pregnant population. Why create unnecessary infrastructure purely for a spurious medical tourist market? Another good question..why are there such significant numbers of mainland women with Hong Kong permanent resident husbands, who themselves are not residents? Hong Kong is fast becoming a special 'tourist' region of China without the ongoing demands on its hospitals to support tourist pregnancies. There are MANY reasons why Hong Kong should not be the landing/birthing point for mainland children, not least of which is the problematic mortality/morbitity of the mother and baby who havent had any antenatal care in the country they are giving birth. What, you think it's acceptable for a pregnant woman to 'hide' out in the weeks leading up to her due date without maternal care and risk the baby's life (and her own) for the sake of a potential right to abode??
 
Another good question..why are there such significant numbers of mainland women with Hong Kong permanent resident husbands, who themselves are not residents?
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I think I can comment on this. At least in the area of Hong Kong where we live there are a lot of older Hong Kong men in blue collar jobs that aren't very well paying and don't have any bright future prospects (i.e. driving lorries etc.) who want to settle down and have a family. The problem is that they aren't really "ideal catches" for most Hong Kong women. Highly educated Hong Kong women are looking for men of a similar calibre and even not very highly educated Hong Kong women are looking for men in a higher social status than they are. So, these men often end up married to Mainland Chinese women. A lot of the men are cross-border drivers as well so they may have housing set up in Shenzhen or elsewhere as well as may live with their family when they're in Hong Kong.

When my son was born, the woman who came in to help me when I had health problems was a Mainland Chinese woman married to a older local man. She said that even though they were married because of a process that is meant to prevent marriage fraud (saying or faking that you're married to someone just so you can get residency) and also lessen the immigration burden, there are quotas and wait-times for families in China that want to join their relatives in Hong Kong. She was married to her husband and pregnant with her first child and still awaiting approval to come to Hong Kong. She told me that at the very last minute pretty much she was granted approval and was able to join him in Hong Kong and ended up giving birth here.

I've been going for massages at one spa for three years now and all of the women who work there, including the owner are originally from Mainland China (Hunan Province but moved to Shenzhen for better work opportunities--most of them working in the mega-spas in Shenzhen). I've had quite a few hours (probably 80+ hours in total that I've spent there over the past 3 years) to chat with them in Chinese and hear their background and stories. All of them have basically the same story. They are here in Hong Kong because their husbands are from Hong Kong. All of their husbands have similar occupations--lorry driver, construction worker etc. If I've gathered anything about how marriage and Chinese society works--in many aspects it's a very practical transaction. A man can't expect to get married if he has "nothing to offer" his potential wife. That means, although love is a great thing to have most women would rather have security and that's found by being married to a man who can help you to be "upwardly socially mobile." The below video kind of illustrates the same point.


Increasingly, men from Hong Kong are marrying women from Mainland China and because of quotas and wait-times set by the HK government they have to wait to get into Hong Kong legally. But, just as illegal immigration issues go the big loophole seems to be the Mainland women who find ways to "gate crash" emergency rooms while in labor. I read an article a couple of months ago talking about how women are now being smuggled past immigration at the border in things like lorries. While the government has really started to crack down on women waddling across the border at the usual checkpoints they haven't really put in place the manpower to deal with all the avenues at the border so Mainland women late in pregnancy who are not properly registered to give birth in Hong Kong are still getting through the border. The immigration staff at the border who were interviewed in the article seemed really overwhelmed and frustrated at the government's mandate to set a quota for Mainland women giving birth in Hong Kong and yet not provide the appropriate amount of practical support in the form of manpower and training.
 
What, you think it's acceptable for a pregnant woman to 'hide' out in the weeks leading up to her due date without maternal care and risk the baby's life (and her own) for the sake of a potential right to abode??
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I never said anything of the sort and let's not jump to any conclusions here. I'm more frustrated with the short sightedness and the lack of overall planning on the part of Leung by simply issuing a blanket statement on banning mainland mothers from giving birth in HK.
 
To be clear, CY said that next there should be no quota for mainland women to give birth in HK if neither the mother nor the father is a HK resident. He didn't say anything about mainland women whose husband are HK residents should be banned from giving birth in HK.

Also, to clarify some muddled concept, a woman with an actual appointment to give birth in HK hospitals legally do not need to hide out anywhere. She can get antenatal care. Those who hide / do not get any antenatal care are the ones who actually do not have any appointment / quota to give birth here, but plan to barge into the ER in public hospitals last minute. Some argue that by eliminating the quota all together, more women will try to barge into ERs last minute. While this may be true, it's another problem and I don't think it should deter the government from limiting the number of non-resident Mainland parents from giving birth here at least until they have a long term plan of how to deal with the resulting increase in population and demand for social services / education etc.
 
To evgreen: why is Leung being shortsighted? Surely it's the fault of the CURRENT administration to allow this situation to spin out of control, and an entire medical tourism industry to ensue, leading to arguably misguided health infrastructure to be established (at the expense of the local requirement). As i said earlier, there is probably enough capacity for the local market.
In a way though Jt06 is right..banning pregnant altogether will likely lead to ongoing 'hide outs'. The real issue is how to address the right of abode in law.
 
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