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Hong Kong split over historic maids residency case

By Beh Lih Yi (AFP) – 9 hours ago
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Source

Foreign domestic helpers gather beneath the HSBC building in the Central district of Hong Kong (AFP, Ed Jones)

HONG KONG — Every Sunday, the public spaces and walkways of Hong Kong are jammed with Filipina and Indonesian domestic workers using their one day off to gather with their friends and fellow countrywomen.

The gleaming skyscrapers of the financial hub are a far cry from the often poor neighbourhoods they have come from.

Now a landmark court ruling has given them a chance to apply for permanent residency -- but the decision, which has polarised opinions in the southern Chinese city, has also prompted different reactions among maids themselves.

Newspapers are filled with opposing arguments and rival protests were held in the run-up to the case hearing. About 500 people held a protest on Sunday against the court ruling.

For some maids, the ruling represents the hope of a better future. Lannie Hubag, 45, a Philippine domestic helper in Hong Kong since 1998, said she would consider applying for permanent residency.

"I would like to try because if I get it, my husband and two daughters in the Philippines can join me in Hong Kong and my daughters could get better education," said Hubag.

"We're happy with the court decision because it means the discrimination has been removed," she added.

But costs and family ties are a deterrent for others. Speaking in her native Indonesian, Asriyatun, 34, said: "I would like to go back" without hesitation, after working for six years in Hong Kong.

Foreigners can seek permanent residency in Hong Kong after seven years of uninterrupted stay, gaining rights to vote and to live in the city without a work visa.

There are as many as 292,000 foreign maids in the city, but they were specifically excluded from being allowed to apply. In the first case of its kind in Asia, the city's High Court ruled on Friday that the provision was unconstitutional.

Permanent residency would mean a domestic worker was no longer tied to a single employer, but could take any job and access benefits such as public housing.

According to a pro-government political party there could be an influx of as many as 500,000 people -- including children and spouses of foreign maids -- costing HK$25 billion ($3.2 billion) in social welfare spending.

Unemployment could jump from the current 3.5 percent to 10 percent, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong claimed.

Following the ruling, currently about 117,000 foreign maids are entitled to apply for permanent residency in the densely populated city of seven million, where rents are sky-high and the income gap widening.

"I love Hong Kong, it's a great city and we are treated better here," said Asriyatun, wearing a black Islamic headscarf and chatting with a group of other Indonesian maids in Victoria Park, their regular meeting spot.

"But I have no plan to apply for permanent residency when I become eligible next year. I'm here to work, I have a family in Indonesia, I want to go back."

Others in her group agreed.

A single mother, Asriyatun left East Java when her son was eight months old to become a domestic helper in Singapore, and later moved to Hong Kong. She works for a German banker's family and her contract will expire in 2013.

She sees her son Shendy, now 14, once a year.

"I'm here to work for a living and for my son's future so when he grows up, he doesn't have to go elsewhere to work and be separated from his child -- just like me," said Asriyatun.

Dolores Balladares from Asian Migrants' Coordinating Body, which represents 8,000 foreign maids in the city, said: "It's only a main barrier that has been removed, it doesn't mean we get this right automatically.

"The standard of living is very expensive here, it's not easy. After working for many years in Hong Kong, many of the foreign domestic helpers just want to go back to reunite with their family," said Balladares, a university graduate who has been a maid for 17 years.

Hong Kong is known as a better place for domestic helpers than many other parts of Asia. The city's foreign maids are guaranteed one day off a week, paid sick leave and a minimum wage of HK$3,740 ($480) a month.

But rights groups say they still face general discrimination and a lack of legal protection. A maid's visa is tied to a specific employer and activists say this leaves her vulnerable.

The government was disappointed with Friday's ruling and said it would appeal.

It is planning to seek the court's permission to not process any foreign maids' residency applications while the appeal is under way, and some lawmakers have called on Hong Kong to refer the issue to Beijing.

"We recognise the contribution of domestic workers and their role in our economy, they free up many local women to join the workforce," said businessman Jeff Lam, who opposed granting maids permanent residency.

"To give them permanent residency however is a separate story," said Lam, who himself has a Filipina domestic worker to help with house chores.

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Court Rules on Side of Maids' Rights to Residency

By KEVIN DREW
Published: September 30, 2011
Source - New York Times

HONG KONG — A law that bars foreign domestic workers from seeking permanent residency in Hong Kong is unconstitutional, a court ruled on Friday in an initial yet significant decision on an issue that has divided this territory.

he decision drew praise from the United Nations’ labor agency, the International Labor Organization. However, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, said he was “personally disappointed,” and the government announced that it would appeal.

Justice Johnson Lam of the High Court said the Immigration Department rule barring foreign domestic workers from permanent residency violated Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the document governing the territory since its return to Chinese rule in 1997. Other foreign workers are allowed to apply for permanent residency after living in Hong Kong continuously for seven years.

The ruling Friday is “very good for the rule of law,” said Mark Daly, an attorney representing the domestic worker from the Philippines who filed the challenge, Evangeline Banao Vallejos. “It reaffirms the independence of the judiciary and public confidence in the judiciary.”

The case has stirred debate among political parties and rights groups, drawing protesters into the streets for and against Ms. Vallejos, who has lived and worked in Hong Kong since 1986.

Her supporters said the restriction on domestic workers was discriminatory. Opponents say changing the rules would result in a flood of foreigners applying for permanent residency and strain public resources.

Justice Lam, citing government estimates, said in his ruling that about 285,000 foreign domestic workers were employed in Hong Kong at the end of 2010, and 117,000 had been here for at least seven years.

The workers, who look after children and perform household chores, make up the majority of non-Chinese residents in this territory of seven million. They are generally given room and board, work six days a week and earn a minimum wage below that set for other workers.

In a statement, Tim de Meyer, a specialist in international labor standards and labor law for the International Labor Organization, praised the ruling.

“Since the mid-’50s, the I.L.O. has been advocating a policy of stabilization of migrant workers who prove to be an asset to a national economy,” he said. “One should not forget that the introduction of lower-skilled workers to do domestic tasks frees up higher-skilled workers, increasingly women, who contribute more to the local economy.”

“And, as in any employment sector, increasing staff turnover is never good for productivity.”

Added Fally Choi, program coordinator for the Asia Monitor Resource Center, a Hong Kong-based rights group: “We hope this ruling draws attention to the discrimination of these types of workers.

The judge said foreign domestic workers were able to become as integrated in Hong Kong society as other residents, noting that, “the mere maintenance of” a “link with her country of origin does not mean that” a domestic worker “is not ordinarily resident in Hong Kong.”

Domestic helpers, he wrote, “like other employees in Hong Kong, are protected by the Employment Ordinance and they are entitled to rest day every week and statutory holidays in the same manner as other employees in Hong Kong. During their rest days and holidays, they are free to do whatever they like in terms of recreation, religious or social activities or other pursuit of life.”

The case is one of three before Hong Kong courts seeking to give foreign domestic workers the right to apply for permanent residency, a status that grants greater access to social programs and the right to vote. The other two cases will be argued in the courts later in October.

In addition to appealing the ruling, the Hong Kong government may find other ways to keep foreign domestic workers from attaining permanent status. It could limit how long they can work in Hong Kong, preventing them from staying for seven consecutive years, though that would not affect the workers who have already passed that threshold.

Joseph Law, chairman of the Hong Kong Employers of Overseas Domestic Helpers Association, which opposed Ms. Vallejos’s case, said the government could also seek Beijing’s interpretation of the Basic Law, as it did in 1999, when the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal ruled that children of permanent residents were eligible for that status, whether or not the parents were permanent residents when the child was born.

Government leaders here subsequently asked the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing to reinterpret the pertinent sections of the Basic Law. The committee effectively overturned the court’s ruling.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 1, 2011, in The International Herald Tribune with the headline: Court Rules on Side of Maids' Rights to Residency.
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