Adopted mainland teenager may be allowed to remain in SAR on humanitarian grounds
The mother of adopted 14-year-old girl Agnes Tam Nga-yin last night said she was confident her daughter would be allowed to stay in the SAR even though she lost her right of abode in a Court of Final Appeal ruling on Friday.
Tam Man Yuet-kwai is to petition the Director of Immigration today after a senior government source said on Saturday the girl could be granted permission to remain on humanitarian grounds.
'I will ask a lawyer to write a petition letter to the director and will submit it to him if the lawyer advises me to do so,' she said.
Nga-yin's secondary school, Cheung Chuk Shan College in Fortress Hill, has informed the family a Form Three place has been reserved for her in the coming school year in September.
Today, her classmates will stage a signature campaign on campus. Nga-yin's permit for conditional stay will expire on August 16. 'I'm moved by the support from members of the public and we hope there will be good news from the Director,' she said at her North Point home.
Yesterday, Allen Lee Peng-fei, a local deputy to the National People's Congress, urged Immigration Director Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong to exercise discretion to allow Nga-yin, who was adopted when she was three months old by her mother on the mainland, to stay.
The Court of Final Appeal ruled on Friday that mainland children adopted by Hong Kong couples were not entitled to right of abode.
'It is very cruel and inhumane to repatriate the adopted girl to the mainland,' Mr Lee said.
Executive Councillor Tam Yiu-chung said the director had the power to decide whether discretion should be granted. 'We should handle other similar cases on adopted children in a cautious manner,' he said.
More than 500 abode-seekers staged a march to government headquarters in Central yesterday to mourn a claimant who committed suicide apparently in protest at the Government's refusal to grant him residency.
Yau Kwong-man, 27, took poison and died on a hillside in Tai Po on July 11.
The abode-seekers and their families, who wore black armbands and held wreaths, marched from Immigration Tower, Wan Chai, to Central Government Offices in a silent vigil.
Cheung Cho-sang, vice-chairman of the parents' organisation for abode-seekers, said: 'He killed himself because he was despondent with the Government's deprivation of his right of abode by seeking Beijing's reinterpretation of the Basic Law in June 1999.'
Yau, from Huizhou, in Guangdong province, was one of the 5,114 abode-seekers born on the mainland to SAR parents. Their judicial review at the Court of Final Appeal has been adjourned to September 5.
The claimants argued they were entitled to residency in accordance with a January 1999 ruling by the Court of Final Appeal.
