- More than 22,500 Hongkongers received Canadian permanent residency, work or study permits in 2021, up 256 per cent from 2019
- The country opened up new pathways to citizenship after the national security law was implemented in 2021
A family who recently emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada walks along Jericho Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Photo: ReutersNew data shows that migration from Hong Kong to Canada has soared to levels not seen since 1998, the year after the city’s handover to China.
The exodus comes after Ottawa set up new exit routes for young Hongkongers in response to the crackdown on anti-government protests in 2019 and Beijing’s imposition of a national security law in 2020.
But the flow of Hongkongers to Canada has risen through other immigration and visa categories too, the data shows.
Emigration’s effect on Hong Kong schools
Large numbers of Hongkongers have been leaving since the introduction of the national security law against secession, subversion of state power, terrorism and foreign interference. Critics say the law has suppressed dissent and eroded freedom in the city.
Figures provided by Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) show that 3,444 Hongkongers were granted Canadian permanent residency in 2021, more than double the number in pre-pandemic 2019, and 15 times that of 2010. It has been 24 years since levels were so high.
That number, however, was dwarfed by those granted study and work permits, which do not immediately mean permanent residency but offer pathways to that status and citizenship thereafter.
They include thousands of three-year open work permits that the Canadian government created in February 2021 for Hongkongers graduating from post-secondary studies within the five years preceding their applications.
Last year, 19,064 Hongkongers were granted Canadian study or work permits, including extensions, more than four times the number granted in 2019. They include 7,952 on the new work permit for Hongkongers.
There are also two new pathways to permanent residency for Hongkongers after they graduate from a Canadian postsecondary institution, or obtain Canadian work experience.
Hong Kong experiences an alarming population drop as 90,000 leave in one year
Hong Kong-based immigration lawyer Jean-Francois Harvey said the Hong Kong-specific schemes had created a “domino effect” on “every other aspect of movement” to Canada.
“More Hongkongers who qualify under these [specific programmes] go to Canada, but they then encourage their friends and relatives to go too,” said Harvey, founder and managing partner of the Harvey Law Group. “Our Vancouver office, for example, has been receiving lots of calls from Hong Kong people who are already in Canada, asking how can they bring their cousins, their friends.”
Harvey said it was not just Hong Kong graduates heading for Canada, but a growing numbers of tradespeople such as carpenters, plumbers and electricians.
Is Hong Kong facing a brain drain?
Overall, 22,508 Hongkongers were granted Canadian permanent residency, work permits or study visas in 2021, up 256 per cent from 2019. There were 11,202 work permits and extensions granted to Hongkongers in 2021, a 544 per cent increase compared with 2019, while study permits and extensions experienced a 171 per cent increase, hitting 7,862.
Despite those increases, the IRCC data likely falls short of depicting the true scale of the flight of Hongkongers to Canada, since it excludes those who already hold Canadian passports. Ottawa previously estimated there were 300,000 Canadian citizens living in Hong Kong, the vast majority of them former immigrants and their children.
Harvey said he had observed a “massive return” of these people to Canada since the introduction of the national security law.
“Within the first few months of the new law, we were getting inquiries from a lot of people wanting to know about the tax implications of going back to Canada,” he said. “It kept us very busy.”
The new IRCC data only includes people who arrived on a Hong Kong SAR passport or a British National (Overseas) passport, a document created specifically for Hongkongers before the 1997 handover.
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The huge population of Canadians in Hong Kong – equivalent to a city the size of Windsor, Ontario – is mostly a result of previous waves of immigration to Canada that peaked in 1994 when more than 44,000 Hongkongers arrived. At that time, Hongkongers were the biggest component of immigration to Canada.
But the flow rapidly reversed, as newly minted Canadian citizens flooded back to Hong Kong after 1997. Immigration from Hong Kong to Canada bottomed out in 2010, when just 223 Hongkongers were granted permanent residency.
The most popular destination for the new wave of Hong Kong emigrants has been Britain, which granted 97,057 BN(O) visas to Hongkongers in 2021 as part of a programme in response to the security law.