Helper turns to court in fight to keep her daughter in HK
A Sri Lankan domestic helper fighting the Immigration Department to keep her two-year-old daughter in Hong Kong is taking the battle to court.
Renuka Wijesingha, 43, has been trying to get a dependent visa for her daughter, Isuri, for six months. Her requests have been refused by immigration officials, who fear that granting her one could open the floodgates to domestic helper mothers who want to bring their children here.
In a last-ditch attempt to keep her baby here, and with the full support of her employers, she is now lodging a judicial review of the case.
Wijesingha's husband left her when Isuri was six months old in Sri Lanka, and there has been no further contact with him.
Wijesingha then came to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper and left the child in the care of her sister, sending money back for her daughter's upkeep. Last year her sister fell ill with cancer and was no longer able to look after the child.
Wijesingha's employers said she could bring her daughter to Hong Kong to stay with them for a month to see how things went.
They have now confirmed they are happy for Wijesingha's daughter to stay with them for the long term.
Wijesingha returned to Sri Lanka and brought Isuri to Hong Kong in October last year. The child received a 30-day tourist visa. When it expired, Wijesingha applied for several extensions on the basis that she was in the process of applying for a dependent visa for her child.
However, the application for a dependent visa was refused, as were subsequent appeals, and she was finally left with no option but to apply for a judicial review of the case.
'I'm very scared because I thought I would lose my job in Hong Kong if I brought my daughter over here, but my employers have been very kind to me,' Wijesingha said.
'Despite this my daughter may still be sent back. I've had many sleepless nights. I don't want my daughter separated from me. There's no one else who can take care of her.'
Wijesingha is a client of Tsim Sha Tsui-based immigration consultant Richard Aziz Butt, who said he was appalled at the Immigration Department's handling of the case.
'What was particularly upsetting was that the Immigration Department still wanted to send the child back to Sri Lanka despite the fact that there was a judicial review application pending a decision,' Butt said. 'They just wanted to remove the child from Hong Kong.
'It was only after we won a court order to restrain immigration from doing this until after the judicial review application was completed that this was avoided.'
The first hearing of the judicial review will take place on Friday.
The Immigration Department does not comment on individual cases, but Butt argued that it was afraid that if it allowed the child to stay with her mother, it would open the floodgates for other domestic helpers to do the same.
Butt said this would not happen because most employers did not want their domestic helpers' children living with them on their premises.
In fact, Butt said, the majority of employers would terminate the helper's work contract and find a new domestic helper.
Wijesingha's employers, Canadian Patrick Doyle and his Chinese wife Pin, have given the mother some hope. They are prepared to provide free food and shelter for the two-year-old, while continuing to employ her mother.
'We're not asking immigration to change their policy but rather to look upon this case as an exceptional one,' Butt said. 'They have a duty to consider each case on its own merit, and this is not a common case.
'The child is even too young to go to school. She is totally dependent. Hong Kong is called 'Asia's world city', but at times like this you wonder whether this is actually true.'
