Immigration Laws: June, 2001 - Number #14

The Hong Kong government in May 2001 again urged the Court of Final Appeal to seek Beijing's opinion before ruling on a case in which the government is challenging the right of three adopted mainland children to live in Hong Kong.

The government argues that adopted children are not the biological children of the Hong Kong parents, and thus should not be granted residency rights according to a 1999 interpretation of the territory's Basic Law, which took effect after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. In 1999, China's Standing Committee of the National People's Congress said that only those with parents who were Hong Kong permanent residents at the time of birth should have permanent residence status. The government argued that the need to restrict a potential influx of Chinese migrants outweighs the rights of the children to stay in Hong Kong.

Overseas Chinese. China is among the top three sources of immigrants to the US, with Mexico and the Philippines. Many Chinese immigrants have become US citizens, but when they have returned to China, some have been detained. Six Chinese-born U.S. citizens were detained in the six months ending in April 2001. The Chinese have also detained legal immigrants born in China, but the US assists only US citizens in China detained for four days or more.

Many of the Chinese-born US citizens went to the US to study in the 1980s and 1990s, and have been returning to work. Those detained have sometimes been accused of violating the state secrets law, which means they lose many of the formal rights granted others, including the right to see a lawyer.

The Chinese government is actively courting overseas Chinese for their skill and knowledge, offering tax breaks, high salaries and exemptions from the one-child policy if they had two children while living abroad. Some returned overseas Chinese have used their "guanxi" - connections - to get documents and statistics that probably would be inaccessible to true outsiders.

Rural China. Rural Chinese were the first to benefit from economic liberalization in 1978, but urban and coastal areas took the lead in income growth in the 1990s, and many rural Chinese became rural-urban migrants. Rural leaders who had become accustomed to collecting ever-higher taxes continued to raise local taxes as peasant incomes grew slowly or fell in the 1990s, prompting local tax revolts.

The central government is trying to reduce corruption and high taxes, but also wants to keep control in rural China. Thus, the state-run press has coined a new term, "farmers' heroes," for those leading the tax revolts, but the central government also wants to collect sufficient taxes for education and support of the elderly.

To head off rural tax revolts, the government in March 2001 prohibited villages and townships from imposing taxes. Instead, local taxes will be folded into one charge, which will be collected by counties and will not exceed five percent of each household's income, and redistributed to villages and townships so that they can provide road repairs, education, welfare and health.

A study in Hebian in the hills of central Sichuan found that farmers receive about $125 a year from the sale of crops and, after expenses, have about $44 in net farm income. If local taxes are limited to five percent of net farm income, they should be about $2; in fact, local taxes are $36.

Northern China regularly has dust storms that carry dust to northeastern Chinese cities and the Korean peninsula and Japan; the storms were worst in 2001 because of a three-year drought. A new desert is forming on the eastern edge of the Quinghai-Tibet Plateau, with some 900 square miles of land become desert each year as more of the land in fragile environments is planted to crops, and livestock herds expanded to 127 million cattle and 270 million sheep and goats (the US has 98 million cattle and nine million sheep).

Taiwan. There were 327,529 foreign workers in Taiwan in March 2001, including 180,000 in manufacturing, 100,000 maids, and 35,000 in construction; the largest group is from Thailand. Foreign workers in manufacturing and construction earn about NT$20,000 a month.

Unemployment reached a 15-year high of 3.9 percent in March 2001, prompting demands by unions to reduce the number of foreign workers, to about 300,000. The Taiwanese government announced that as of May 16 there is a ban on the import of labor for the public construction projects because of rising unemployment. Unemployment in the construction industry is about 7.98 percent as of February 2001, with 67,530 people unemployed.

Officials have said that the jobless rate for April 2001 may top the record of 4.1 percent in August 1985. More layoffs are expected due to mergers and closures during the economic slowdown.

The Council of Labor Affairs wants to reduce the minimum wage of foreign domestic helpers, currently NT$15,840 (US$495), by considering the value of their housing and meals as part of their wage. If this change is made, wages paid to workers would fall by NT$3,000 to NT$4,000 a month. The CLA says that this reduction will be offset by tighter controls on labor brokers which would reduce the fees migrants pay.

North Koreans. An estimated 100,000 North Koreans have crossed into China in search of food. Under a North Korean-China treaty, they are returned and treated as rebels-most are sent to labor camps, and some have been executed.

A group of South Koreans is trying to get the South Korean government to feed Korean migrants in China; the South Korean government is reluctant to do so, fearing that North Korea might break off talks on normalizing relations.