No matter how much the Immigration Department protests that its decision to slash the time span for visa-free entry to citizens of South Asian countries is not racial discrimination, officials will have difficulty in explaining why it is that these restrictions are only applied to people with brown skin.
In November, the Nepalese became the target when the department axed visa-free entry altogether. The grounds put forward at the time were that many wives and children who arrived as visitors tried to change their status with false documents and fictitious claims.
The restrictions on Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Indian visitors do not end visa-free entry, but will cut the length of stay to two weeks, making it very inconvenient for business commuters or for relatives coming to renew family ties.
If there had been a surge in these ethnic groups breaking immigration laws, the department's actions might have been understandable. But deportation orders have dropped since 1996. That leaves some explaining to be done.
Last year, more than 133,000 people arrived from the three countries. Of these, 389 were arrested for overstaying, and 310 for using forged travel documents. That does not make a flood, and the action looks all the more punitive beside moves to scrap visa entry for Americans, Finns, Japanese, Greeks, Germans and South Koreans.
The subtle discrimination which people with Indian subcontinent origins have been subjected to through the years appears to be clearly entrenched in the Hong Kong culture, despite our claims to be a multi-racial community. The department's move reinforces the view that some ethnic groups are treated as second-class citizens, even when they have lived here for generations.