The UK could offer British National (Overseas) passport holders in Hong Kong a path to citizenship if China does not suspend plans for a security law in the territory, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab says. There are 2.9m people in Hong Kong eligible for the passport.
There are 300,000 BNO passport holders in Hong Kong who already have the right to visit the UK for up to six months without a visa.
But the Home Office confirmed that the proposed new rights, allowing those eligible to spend 12 months in the UK without a visa, could be offered to anyone with BNO status as long as they applied for and were granted the passport – opening it up to 2.9m Hong Kong residents.
British National (Overseas) passports were issued to people in Hong Kong by the UK before the transfer of the territory to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Raab said the six-month limit on stays in the UK for BNO holders would be scrapped.
“If China continues down this path and implements this national security legislation, we will remove that six month limit and allow those BNO passport holders to come to the UK and to apply to work and study for extendable periods of 12 months and that will itself provide a pathway to future citizenship,” he said.
This is so good, the best joke next to the Trump announcement.