It has been more than two years since the UK launched the BNO (5+1) visa for people from Hong Kong at the end of January 2021.
After Hong Kong’s anti-extradition movement in 2019, Beijing passed the Hong Kong version of the national security law to stifle Hong Kong’s freedom.
Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister at the time, said in June 2020 that the Hong Kong national security law severely destroyed the Sino–British Joint Statement; the British government immediately started an immigration visa program specifically for people from Hong Kong. The program ushered in a new wave of large-scale immigration from Hong Kong, formerly the third-largest financial center in the world.
According to the British Home Office’s data, from Jan. 31, 2021, to March 31, the office received 172,500 BNO visa applications.
During the same period, 139,144 Hongkongers were granted BNO visas abroad, while 27,276 BNO visas were issued in the UK, for a total of 166,420.
Of those, 113,500 have already arrived in the UK.
In the first quarter of 2023, British authorities received 9,411 BNO applications, with 9,279 BNO visas issued, of which 3,014 were approved within the UK.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data show that the number of net immigrants in the UK reached a record high in 2022, putting pressure on the British Conservative government, which promised in its 2019 manifesto to reduce immigration.
The number of net immigrants in the UK in 2022 was 606,000; about 114,000 came from Ukraine and about 52,000 from came from Hong Kong.
The record shows that 172,758 asylum seekers are still awaiting decisions.
The number of international students has increased significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of visas for skilled workers has also soared—especially in health care, which is why non-EU immigration has risen drastically.
At the time of the Brexit referendum, some supporters believed that Brexit would lead to a reduction in immigration, but in the changing international landscape, it’s clear that the government’s desire to control immigration hasn’t been realized. According to statistics, a vast majority of foreigners arriving in the UK (925,000) are non-EU nationals, and about 1 in 12 of them are asylum seekers.
Jay Lindop, director of the Centre for International Migration at the ONS, said, “The main drivers of the increase were people coming to the UK from non-EU countries for work, study, and humanitarian purposes, including those arriving from Ukraine and Hong Kong.”
This increase puts pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak; although the UK’s public services and health care sector need staffing, he has inherited the promises of several predecessors and made reducing immigration a political goal.
