Hong Kong welcomes reverse migrants from Vancouver - now it wants their children too
Not content with the return of thousands of Hong Kong emigrants who have poured out of Vancouver since the handover, the SAR government now wants their kids, too.
In other words, about 33,000 Hongkongers departed Vancouver in those 15 years (including deaths). What’s more, arrivals are now a mere trickle - in 2013, there were only 383 new Hong Kong immigrants for all of British Columbia.
Hiebert said it was “probably Japan” that first tried to tap into this group, seeking to attract ethnic Japanese whose ancestors had emigrated, mainly to Latin America. But the idea failed in many ways, primarily because such migrants often found it difficult to assimilate into a Japanese society with which they were unfamiliar and from which they felt “very detached”. “It was tough to integrate that population, and quite a few decided to move back to Brazil or wherever else they came from,” he said.
Hiebert noted that in the Japanese case, many of these migrants’ ancestors had left their homeland generations ago, so the situation was not exactly analogous to the Hong Kong government’s plan.
But similar cultural factors could come into play. Hiebert said a relative lack in proficiency in Cantonese could deter some children of emigrants from taking up the visa offer, as could a preference for Vancouver’s laid-back, outdoorsy lifestyle compared to that of high-density, high-intensity Hong Kong.
Nick So, a 29-year-old marketing strategist, moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong with his parents in 1990 when he was just four years old. He holds no Hong Kong residency, and thus could apply to the new scheme.
But the downside issues raised by Hiebert all resonate for So. He said he spoke Cantonese, but was not confident he spoke it well enough “to be successful in business. I’m not sure if there would be a language barrier, because my Chinese isn’t super-fluent.”
Another downside consideration for So – one that was also raised by Hiebert - was the cost of housing in Hong Kong, the only city in the world with worse affordability than Vancouver.
Hiebert said he suspected that the bulk of the migratory flow from Vancouver to Hong Kong was over. “There may still be something left in the reverse flow, but I cannot see it happening at a colossal scale,” he said.
Yet the Canadian-born children of Hong Kong emigrants - as well as what he called the “1.5 generation” who left Hong Kong as very young children – continued to “scan the opportunities available for them, both here [in Vancouver] and there [in Hong Kong]”. “Typically, that group of people still has family networks in Hong Kong. Uncles, aunts, second-cousins, whatever. So they’ve got places to crash for a while, they can look around and survey the scene,” he said.
Hiebert said that even if some Vancouverites do take up the visa offer, it may not have huge, long-term implications. “Maybe the plan works as intended. But with a highly fluid population you’ve got to worry about retention as well as attraction…these kind of policies are never massive, crashing successes.”
The Hongcouver blog is devoted to the hybrid culture of its namesake cities: Hong Kong and Vancouver. All story ideas and comments are welcome. Connect with me by email [email protected] or on Twitter, @ianjamesyoung70