Guide
Many people who were born here, went to school here and have never lived anywhere else hold permanent residency but not Chinese nationality. This is what that means, and what applying to naturalise involves.
Permanent residency and nationality are two different things, and it is easy to reach adulthood in Hong Kong without anyone explaining the difference. Families in the Pakistani, Indian and Nepali communities in particular often discover it only when a passport is needed, a job requires it, or a child's own status comes into question.
The right of abode is the right to live in Hong Kong, to come and go, to work without permission from anyone and to vote. Many people in these communities have it, often by birth or after seven years of ordinary residence, and hold a permanent identity card that says so.
Chinese nationality is a separate question. The HKSAR passport is issued to Chinese nationals who are permanent residents. Someone who is a permanent resident but holds, for example, Pakistani or Indian nationality is entitled to live here for life, but travels on the passport of a country that may be one they have never lived in. That is the gap this guide is about.
Applications to naturalise as a Chinese national are made to the Immigration Department. Broadly, the Department looks at your connection to Hong Kong and to China, which may include having near relatives who are Chinese nationals or being settled here, and at whether you are willing to abide by the Basic Law and the laws of Hong Kong.
The application is discretionary. Meeting the general description does not oblige the Department to approve it, and applications from people with a long and obvious connection to Hong Kong are not automatically straightforward.
Chinese nationality law does not recognise dual nationality. In practice that means naturalising involves giving up the nationality you hold now.
Here is where people get caught. Some countries will not let a citizen renounce their nationality until that person has already acquired another one. If approval of the Hong Kong application is in turn linked to giving up the original nationality, an applicant can find themselves circling: unable to complete one step without first completing the other. In the worst case a person can be left, or fear being left, with no nationality at all.
This is not a theoretical problem. It is the single most common reason these applications stall, and it is the reason to take advice before starting rather than after becoming stuck. The order in which steps are taken, and what is put before the Department and when, matters a great deal.
It is tempting to treat this as a travel-document inconvenience. It is usually more than that. Nationality can bear on which public offices a person may hold, on how straightforward it is to sponsor family members, on a child's position at birth, and on how secure a family feels about its long-term future in the only place it has lived.
For families who have been in Hong Kong for two or three generations, the gap between belonging here in every practical sense and belonging here in law is not a small thing.
A refusal, or an application that simply never seems to progress, is not necessarily the end of it. Decisions of the Immigration Department can sometimes be revisited, and where a decision is unlawful or a decision-maker has failed to act properly, judicial review may be available. Whether that is the right route depends entirely on the facts and on how the decision was reached, which is why it is worth having someone look at the papers rather than assuming nothing can be done.
We advise on naturalisation, right of abode and verification of eligibility for permanent identity cards, and we act in proceedings at the Immigration Tribunal, the Registration of Persons Tribunal, or in judicial review where an immigration decision needs to be challenged. We work in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu, so this conversation can happen in the language you would rather have it in.
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Not necessarily. Being born here, and holding the right of abode, does not by itself make a person a Chinese national. Many people born in Hong Kong hold another nationality and remain non-Chinese nationals into adulthood.
The HKSAR passport is issued to Chinese nationals who are permanent residents. A permanent resident who is not a Chinese national is not eligible for one and travels on the passport of their country of nationality.
Chinese nationality law does not recognise dual nationality, so naturalisation involves giving up the nationality you hold. The practical difficulty is the sequence, because some countries will not permit renunciation until another nationality has already been acquired.
That fear is the reason to take advice before starting rather than midway through. The sequence in which steps are taken is exactly what a lawyer can help you plan.
Not necessarily. Depending on how the decision was made, it may be possible to have it revisited, and in some circumstances judicial review is available. It is worth having the papers looked at.
Written by Patricia Ho, managing partner. The firm's immigration practice includes naturalisation, right of abode and verification of eligibility for permanent identity cards, and it acts in judicial review of immigration decisions.
This page is general information, not legal advice on any specific situation, and nationality practice can change. For advice on your circumstances, contact us.
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