5.6 But such agreements will be less likely and less workable unless the new passports on their own are evidence both of a national status and of the right to reside some- where. It will no longer be possible for the British issuing authorities to endorse passports with "right of abode in Hong Kong" after 1997 as British will be unable to promise right of abode in Chinese sovereign territory. It has therefore been suggested that the passports be endorsed with a reference to the holder's identity card, which will show a right to live in Hong Kong. This will almost certainly mean that third countries will require to see the identity card itself, and in effect that it will be the card, and not the passport, which is the key to admission. The travel document facility, which is all that British nationals in Hong Kong are now being offered by Britain, would thus become almost valueless. Indeed, the procedure envisaged might well discourage third countries from accepting Hong Kong people travelling on BN (0) passports. Immigration officials elsewhere are unlikely to have read the fine print of the Agreement between Britain and China; they may therefore assume that the unusal arrangement of nationals of one country needing identity cards issued by another to prove a right of abode might mean that those people would either have difficulty in returning to Hong Kong or be reluctant to do so.
5.7 Such a procedure would also leave many expatriate BN(0)s without the means to travel freely. Hong Kong "belongers" include people born outside Hong Kong to Hong- Kong-born parents. If they live outside the territory, they may not possess Hong Kong identity cards, and would therefore have no means of showing that under Hong Kong's immigration law and the Agreement with China they have the right to live in Hong Kong.
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