Hong Kong immigrants
Hong Kong immigrants refer to individuals who emigrated from the British colony of Hong Kong, particularly during the late 20th century, primarily due to political changes anticipated with China's takeover in 1997. This wave of immigrants marked a significant shift from previous Chinese migration patterns, as many were middle-class professionals and businesspeople rather than peasants or laborers. Unlike earlier immigrant groups, a high percentage of Hong Kong immigrants were proficient in English and arrived in the United States seeking political security rather than economic opportunity.
The unique characteristics of Hong Kong immigrants include their compressed migration timeline, often motivated by a sense of urgency to obtain foreign passports before the sovereignty transition. Their mentality often reflected a sojourner approach, with many maintaining strong ties to their homeland and returning briefly to Hong Kong even during the naturalization process. This demographic shift has also transformed Chinese American communities, leading to the emergence of suburban Chinatowns and new social dynamics.
By 2021, approximately 250,000 individuals in the U.S. identified as having Hong Kong ancestry, making up about 10% of the Chinese immigrant community. Despite historical ties and advocacy for increased immigration opportunities in response to political repression, the mid-2020s saw a decline in support for immigration, influenced by broader sentiments towards China. This context highlights the complexities and evolving narratives surrounding Hong Kong immigrants in the United States.
Hong Kong immigrants
SIGNIFICANCE: Immigrants from the Chinese port city of Hong Kong have differed from earlier Chinese immigrants in a variety of distinctive ways. Their arrival in the United States has drastically transformed the nature of Chinese American communities.
Located along the South China coast, Hong Kong became a British colony during the mid-nineteenth century. During a century and a half of European colonial rule, Hong Kong culture became so different from that of the rest of China that the concept of a “Hong Konger” identity arose during the 1970s. During the early 1980s, the People’s Republic of China was determined to take Hong Kong back from Great Britain. As European imperialism was no longer popular throughout the world, Britain eventually agreed to restore Chinese sovereignty to Hong Kong in 1997. The prospect of China’s communist government assuming control of strongly capitalist Hong Kong triggered the emigration of between 500,000 and 750,000 residents of Hong Kong to other countries, including the United States. In 2021, 248,0246 people in the United States claimed some connection to Hong Kong ancestry, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Characteristics of Hong Kong Immigrants
During the 1980s and the 1990s, many of the people who emigrated from Hong Kong settled in the United States. In contrast to the peasants and contract laborers who had earlier immigrated from China to the United States, members of the late twentieth-century wave of Hong Kong immigrants were primarily middle-class professionals and businesspeople, many of whom were very prosperous. More than 70 percent of Hong Kong immigrants to the United States fell into the skilled worker and business immigrant categories. Moreover, 90 percent of them arrived in the United States already capable of conversing in English. Some observers have called these immigrants “yacht people,” a facetious term that distinguishes the prosperous Hong Kongers from the desperately poor Vietnamese boat people.
In contrast to professional immigrants from other countries who have used migration as a vehicle for upward mobility, many of Hong Kong’s immigrants have experienced a loss of social status, reduced incomes, damage to their career development, and downward mobility in the United States. Hong Kong’s emigrants might be regarded as reluctant exiles because most of them have left their homeland for political reasons, not for economic gain. Fearing they would lose political freedoms, their prosperous lifestyles, and their physical assets after communist China took over Hong Kong, many Hong Kong emigrants were anxious to obtain passports of other countries before 1997, calculating that foreign citizenship would protect them from Hong Kong’s new communist regime.
Another unusual characteristic of Hong Kong emigration was its speed. Large-scale migrations of professional people generally take place over long periods. In contrast, Hong Kong’s middle-class migration was highly compressed. Its emigrants felt compelled to obtain foreign passports before 1997, figuring it would be too late for them to do so after the communist takeover in 1997. Consequently, the overwhelming bulk of Hong Kong immigrants to the United States arrived between the late 1980s and the late 1990s.
Another unusual characteristic of Hong Kong immigrants that set them apart from other professional immigrants was their attitude about remaining in the United States. Whereas middle-class professionals generally prefer to settle permanently after arriving in the United States, Hong Kong immigrants tended to have a “sojourner” mentality. Their paramount aim was to secure citizenship in other countries as a kind of political insurance for their futures in Hong Kong itself. With foreign passports, they could return to Hong Kong knowing that they could later leave at any time should serious trouble arise under the coming communist government. Indeed, many Hong Kong immigrants returned to Hong Kong even before they applied for naturalization in other countries; these people sometimes stayed overseas only long enough to meet the minimal residence requirements required to secure their foreign passports.
A final characteristic of Hong Kong immigrants has been their strong sense of Hong Kong Chinese identity. They keep in touch with friends and relatives in Hong Kong and closely monitor political changes occurring there. The social lives of many Hong Kong Chinese in the United States are typically built around networks of friends who are also from Hong Kong. They speak Cantonese in their American homes, dine regularly in Chinese restaurants, regularly buy overseas editions of Hong Kong newspapers, and watch television programs on the Cantonese-language Jade Channel.
Impact on Chinese American Communities
The arrival of a large number of Hong Kong immigrants has helped to transform Chinese American communities. Like middle-class white Americans, middle-class Hong Kong immigrants generally seek superior housing and living conditions. Consequently, they tend to live outside the old Chinatowns. The residential patterns of Hong Kong immigrants gave birth to many new suburban Chinatowns during the 1980s and 1990s. Whereas old Chinatowns were mostly located in city centers, the new Chinatowns were attached to newly suburban communities. Old Chinatowns are cohesive residential communities with strong ethnic organizations, but the new Chinatowns were merely clusters of shops established to service ethnic consumer demands for Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants.
Middle-class immigrants from Hong Kong and other regions of China have purchased properties in the United States for investment and speculation. Another reason for doing so beyond financial gain is to receive a green card under a federal immigration program known as EB-5. Under the provisions of EB-5, up to 10,000 foreign investors each year will be eligible to receive a green card for investing at least $500,000 and creating ten US jobs as a result of their investment. In 2014, Chinese citizens received 90 percent of the available EB-5 visas; the State Department decided to limit the number of visas available to Chinese immigrant investors for 2015. The popularity of EB-5 visas for Chinese looking to immigrate to the United States continued to grow to such an extent that a backlog has been in effect since 2015, and the process is fraught with long delays lasting years. Still, in 2019, 4,327 Chinese foreign nationals received an EB-5 visa. Although advocates of the program state that Chinese immigrant investors have become a valued alternative source of financing and investment in local US economies, critics say the program allows immigrant investors to effectively buy citizenship. The program has also been criticized for being overly complicated and mismanaged.
2020s: A Growing Population in the US
The size of the American Hong Kong-born Chinese community experienced sizable growth in four decades. Beginning with 80,000 immigrants in 1980, this number increased to 204,000 in 2000, and to over 250,000 in the next quarter century. In relation to the entire Chinese immigrant community in the United States, in 2021, the Hong Kong-born composed about 10%.
Following the heavy-handed manner China absorbed Hong Kong, many advocates called for increased immigration opportunities for Hongkongers to the United States. An argument was that the United States could inflict more substantial punishment on China by encouraging immigration than by issuing sanctions. This would have added the benefit of inducing a wealth of human talent into the United States. In the mid-2020s, the national sentiment in the United States seemed to preclude this as a possibility. In addition to much reduced support for immigration, many Americans harbored ill-will toward Chinese citizens stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. The presidential administration of Donald Trump (2017–2021) also cast China as an economic nemesis for the United States. For these reasons, as of the mid-2020s, a new immigration wave of Hongkongers to the United States had not materialized. More notable have been the immigration attempts of other Chinese citizens that appeared in large numbers along the US southern border.
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