Hong Kong women using study visas for sex work overseas

Hong Kong women are signing up for language schools in Australia as a front to work in the country's lucrative sex trade, according to advocates and sources in the industry.

The practice has been going on for several years and some schools are complicit in facilitating the work, according to sex workers' associations and sources close to the prostitutes.

Perceived higher wages and an easier lifestyle have long lured Asian sex workers to Australia. A University of New South Wales study found that more than half of Sydney's prostitutes were Asian.

While prostitution is legal in Australia and holders of study visas can work for up to 20 hours a week, the Hong Kong women are said to be working full time in brothels and ignoring class. Women's advocates say they risk falling into sex slavery and debt bondage.

"In the past three weeks, I have met up with 17 new ladies who have travelled to Sydney from Hong Kong on student paperwork supplied by the school, so they can enter Sydney and commence working in brothels," said a source who helped the women settle in Australia. The women typically hailed from towns in the New Territories and can earn about HK$60,000 per week by working seven-day weeks in Sydney's brothels, the source said.

Paperwork from the schools helped them pass immigration but was quickly discarded upon arrival, said the source, adding that the women even joked about not attending class.