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hardship this causes, by encouraging the use of our daily quota of egal immigration from China to bring together such families. AS with illegal immigration, China has been very co-operative in this respect. Over 90% of the quota, whose places are filled on the Chinese side, are joining husbands, wives or children who are already Hong Kong residents.
One of the many liberal provisions in the Basic Law Article 24 (which I will refer to later because of its beneficial effect also on many of you more directly) may both make and enable us to enhance this cross-border family reunion policy. Article 24(2) (3) gives right of abode to children of Hong Kong Chinese residents, born outside Hong Kong. This means, we estimate that upwards of 75 000 children of Hong Kong permanent residents will be entitled to right of abode. One of the most major immigration policy considerations we have at the moment is considering, with the Chinese authorities, the best way to spread out their entry without disrupting our social, especially educational planning.
Right of Abode
As I said earlier, I mention these points not only because they are important to all of us in Hong Kong, but to context other issues of closer interest to this audience. For it is not always appreciated that right of abode in Hong Kong is more widely and firmly entrenched for all permanent residents, such as yourselves, from 1997, than it is now. The Basic Law enshrines in law llong Kong's unique interrelationship, already existing in practice, between permanent residency and nationality. It illustrates that nationality should be less important for the individual (as opposed to the sovereign) than permanent residency rights, which are effectively "citizenship", as befits a international city. our mini-constitution is drawn up makes clear that the key fact preserving both rights and convenience in Hong Kong in the future will be permanent residency not. nationality. As far as Hong Kong. and the Hong Kong Government which becomes the Hong Kong SAR Government, is concerned, the position of those of you who have British passports will be thus hardly any different from those who have kept their Indian or Pakistani passports, or quite probably those whether ethnic Chinese or not who keep Canadian or Australian passports.
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The way
For of course one of the interesting few non-isues in the immigration and nationality field at present is the removal of the few British privileges with the end of colonial rule.. This is not just because the British have not resisted decolonization for half a century, perhaps could not have resisted the pressures, internal and external, for it. (Such things happened also for example in India itself does anyone here know, by the way, what happened to the ethnic Chinese minority in, for example, Calcutta, when the British left india?) It is because it is genuinely not an issue. Even those Brits like myself, who still benefit from these minor privileges (for example the right to a judge's involvement before deportation) are keen to see them disappear as they should with Hong Kong's colonial status. But the Basic Law gives a better situation to other nationalities than after independence elsewhere; minority nationalities should in fact gain as against now, as the Basic Law has more liberal international provisions than the immigration