Like millions of other people around the world, we celebrated Lunar New Year with a family gathering. Three generations were present, all the main strands of the family sat around the dinner table and lucky money packets were exchanged.
There were some distinctive Hong Kong-type aspects. Most of those attending the celebration now live overseas, and the dinner itself was at an excellent Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia. For language you had a choice of Cantonese, Mandarin or English.
The choice of location was not an accident: the largest single block of attendees was a family of four who live there. Other places were also represented, with three from Europe and one each from eastern Canada and the United States, while six of the 15 came from Hong Kong. I doubt this is an unusual situation: it probably applies to many other local families too.
It was against this backdrop that I began to consider whether emigrants from Hong Kong should lose their access to subsidised health and other services here in the city at some point. The subject came up at a Legislative Council meeting last month when some members proposed restricting access to current residents, but Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau ruled this out on the grounds that vetting arrangements to determine eligibility would be administratively burdensome.
Clearly there would be difficulties for some services, especially in an emergency, but I don’t think we can leave the argument there. If people have chosen to make their lives somewhere else, then they are contributing to that community, not this one. Sometimes the contribution will be direct in the form of paying taxes, but it can also be indirect in terms of purchasing goods and services in that economy, thus boosting demand.
Such skills and experience as they possess will also be available to their new country and employers there can take advantage of them. Their children will grow up there and be the athletes, musicians and entertainers of the future. It seems only right that, at some point, public services provided free or at a heavily subsidised price in this city should cease to be available to them.
09:35
Hong Kong families find fresh start in London
Hong Kong families find fresh start in London
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