I refer to the articles by the Secretary for Security Regina Ip and by Bishop Joseph Zen, under the headline 'Two sides of great divide in abode case' (Sunday Morning Post, January 20).
I feel that Mrs Ip explained the right-of-abode case fairly, logically and not without compassion, while Bishop Zen (coadjutor of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong) was on very shaky grounds indeed.
That does not mean that I lack compassion for the younger children in this case. Some of them are the victims of their own parents' decision to break the law in order to jump the queue. Some of the cases still need to be considered, not on legal grounds, but on strong compassionate grounds only. In the case of the older adult children one might question why their parents abandoned them to come to Hong Kong themselves many years ago, but now blame Hong Kong for their own neglect of the children they left behind.
Bishop Zen talks of 'family unity'. That is a weak argument because he does not ask why such unity was broken by the parents when they left their children behind. Nor does he clarify why family union must be achieved in Hong Kong and not on the mainland. No law of God stipulates in what location family union must take place. The bishop refers to 'reinterpretation' when in fact China merely clarified, or interpreted, the Basic Law which was loosely written on this point. The Basic Law drafters did not anticipate the sometimes tricky ways by which children would be illegally brought to Hong Kong, or would come on visitors' visas and overstay. He appears to support law breaking to get what one wants.
I speak from long experience of immigrant cases. In fact any case in which there were genuinely compassionate grounds for permission to stay has usually been successful. The law is the law and compassion is compassion, but Bishop Zen seems not to differentiate between the genuine and the opportunistic.
I do not recall him defending illegal migrants before 1997, in spite of the fact that post-1997 policy has been rather more lenient on illegal immigrants than it was before the handover.