Hong Kong Investment Immigration listens to the heartfelt stories of Hong Kong, and the immigration story segment is telling:
Born in 1984, Zhang Liangying has a frail body and a youthful face, still retaining some of the innocence of a student. Relying on her son’s social welfare allowance, the two of them live in a cramped space of less than 6 square meters.
According to reports, Zhang Liangying has to return to Huizhou every three months to renew her Hong Kong visa. “One time my son asked me, ‘Mom, can we not go back to the mainland?’ I was left speechless. I have no choice; your mother does not have a Hong Kong Identity Card, so we cannot stay here.”
Summer vacation is supposed to be a joyous time for children, but there are likely about 7,000 children in Hong Kong whose summer vacation is not happy. Similar to Zhang Liangying’s son, Fang Ruixi, there are over a thousand cross-border single-parent families in Hong Kong. The father is a Hong Kong resident but is either deceased or has abandoned the child, while the mother is a mainland resident who cannot work in Hong Kong due to not having a Hong Kong Identity Card, and the family survives on more than 3,000 Hong Kong dollars in government assistance while living in subdivided flats.
These children, lacking residency status in the mainland or facing court decisions prohibiting their departure from the mainland, can only wait for their mainland mothers to come to Hong Kong to take care of them. However, because of divorce or the death of their husbands, these mothers are often not granted permits to travel to Hong Kong. These children rely on their mothers frequently obtaining visiting visas to come to Hong Kong, leading to interruptions in their education for several weeks every three months or even every 14 days, as they return with their mothers to renew their visas or stay alone at home in Hong Kong.
These children face a variety of difficulties, whether due to family changes, lack of funds for summer activities, or having to accompany their mothers back to the mainland for visa renewals. Over the years, these children have never had the opportunity to experience a typical summer vacation or family life. In school, because of their status as single-parent children and their mothers being residents of the mainland, they often face discrimination and appear withdrawn and silent.
The vast majority of cross-border single-parent families survive on their children's social welfare allowance, and after paying high rents, there is little money left for living expenses. Mothers and children live in extreme poverty and anxiety for long periods, severely impacting their physical and mental health, academic performance, and emotional well-being.
This isolated group is hidden at the bottom of Hong Kong society. In the bright sunshine of summer vacation, what this group of children faces is a grey time.