Diseño del Plan General de Pruebas

After the “touch base” policy was ended in October 1980, mainland Chinese illegal migratory activities, commonly by human smuggling through sea routes and overstaying a PRC-issued family visit permit in Hong Kong, continued to occur (Lau 2008; Leung and Lee 2005;

Newendorp 2008; Tsang 2006; Wong 2000).⁴¹ In the 1980s-90s the majority of illegal immigrants were wives and non-adult children of Hong Kong resident men who tried to circumvent the OWP system to settle in Hong Kong. As Tsang (2006) explains, the illegal influx of cross-border family members was in some ways facilitated by the “loopholes” in Hong Kong’s immigration laws, that required no identity check for children under age 15 and allowed officials to exercise discretion to permit stay for those who had “genuine hardship and distress”

(Legislative Council 1980b). While immigration officials stood firm in repatriating illegal immigrants who came for jobs, a certain extent of discretion was exercised to allow illegal minors under age 14 to stay in Hong Kong.⁴² Nonetheless, the immigration “loopholes” were increasingly exploited by cross-border families as more and more children were being smuggled in illegally, often putting their lives at risk.⁴³ Even mainland wives at a late stage of pregnancy resorted to smuggling and risking their lives to enter Hong Kong in an attempt to bestow Hong Kong birthright residence on their children (Tsang 2006).

41 Over 60 percent of mainland illegal immigrants came through sea routes by speedboats and fishing junks, as Hong Kong and mainland authorities had stepped up land patrol on both sides of the border after the end of the “touch base” policy (Tsang 2006:98).

42 The Hong Kong immigration authorities took two conditions into consideration to exercise discretion to permit illegal minors to stay in Hong Kong: (1) if both parents were legal Hong Kong residents; (2) if their mothers were deceased or lost from the family. Since late 1980 an average of 600 illegal children surrendered monthly to the immigration authorities for stay assessment. From 1981 to 1986 a total of 6,516 illegal children were permitted to stay in Hong Kong (Tsang 2006:110-115).

43 For instance, in 1985 and 1986 five children died during their illegal passage into Hong Kong. Between September 1986 and April 1987, 94 children were found abandoned by smugglers in 18 different cases (Tsang 2006:118).

Calls arose for the government to take a firmer stance on banning illegal migratory activities, culminating in the official one-day amnesty in which children under age 14 who had already arrived in Hong Kong illegally were allowed to report to the Immigration Department within 24 hours for identity registration (Cheung and Wai 1987). However, during the registration process, 68 mothers of the surrendered children were found to be illegal immigrants and all of them except three were subject to repatriation (Macklin 1988). Facing the forced removal, the women’s Hong Kong husbands launched a series of petitions and protests to urge the government to handle the issue more humanely. This event was one of the two major collective actions among Hong Kong-China couples fighting for family reunion outside the monolithic OWP policy in the 1980s (another was organized by mainland “boat bride” families;

see section 2.2.5 in this chapter). Despite the families’ pleas and sentimental protests including hunger strikes and cutting fingers to write “blood petitions” (Macklin, Wong, and Lee 1988; L.

Tam 1988a; Yeung 1988a and b), unsympathetic voices were commonly heard even from other cross-border families who did not participate in the protests. The government’s ultimatum to remove illegal mothers came in late January 1988; the women were sent back to China in a tearful farewell (L. Tam 1988b; Tang and Tam 1988).

Another cross-border family method of circumventing the OWP system is to overstay their PRC-issued, temporary family visit permit in Hong Kong. The exit-entry permit, commonly known as Two-way Permit (TWP), is a travel document that allows mainland residents to go to Hong Kong for short-term purposes such as family visits and tourism. In general, a mainland resident, who has a spouse, offspring, parent or spouse’s parent, or sibling who is a Hong Kong resident, is eligible to apply for the Exit Endorsement for Visiting Relatives to be borne on their TWP document in order to enter Hong Kong for a family visit. In 1983 the PRC and Hong Kong

governments agreed to allow 75 persons per day to visit Hong Kong on a TWP (there is no official data on the exact quota allocated for family visit application). The daily quota steadily increased to 713 in 1995—the figure was five times more than the daily 150 permanent OWP quota. However, for most mainlanders, visiting their family members in Hong Kong on a temporary TWP was not a complete solution for long periods of separation caused by a long wait for a permanent OWP. This is not only due to the imposition of annual TWP application limits until the early 2000s,⁴⁴ but also because applicants frequently encountered corruption and bureaucratic problems in the course of the process. Therefore, for those lucky ones who were granted a TWP, they might decide to overstay the permit to extend the stay with their families in Hong Kong until being arrested by the police and immigration officials (Lau 2008; Leung and Lee 2005; Newendorp 2008; Wong 2000).

Caught in between OWP and TWP constraints and a growing hostility toward mainland illegal immigrants, by the early 1980s, Hong Kong-China split families’ attempts for family reunion through illegal migratory activities inevitably incurred Hong Kong people’s resentment despite their moral claims. In the 1980s there was another salient collective action organized by Hong Kong husbands and their mainland “boat brides” to fight for the women’s residence rights in Hong Kong. This issue not only demonstrated the complexity of the Hong Kong-China marriage phenomenon in the 1980s, but also the arbitrariness of state power in controlling cross-border marriage migration and the definition of immigrants’ status legality.

44 Before November 2002 mainland family members of Hong Kong residents were only allowed to apply for the Exit Endorsement for Visiting Relatives to enter Hong Kong twice a year. Each endorsement allowed the applicant to stay in Hong Kong for a period of three months or less per visit.