'Discrimination Against New Immigrants Still Serious'

The Society for Community Organisation (Soco) said on Sunday that nearly half of some 500 ‘new immigrants’ they surveyed have experienced some form of discrimination as a result of their immigrant status.

In one case, a nine-year-old girl and her mother, who live in a public housing estate, said they had been harassed by a hostile neighbour who smashed their windows.

Soco polled 336 adult new immigrants, most of them women, and 195 children who either emigrated from the mainland or had immigrant parents between May 2019 and January this year.

The group said 54 percent of the adult respondents, and 32 percent of the children, said they had faced direct discrimination.

Some said they had been ignored or joked about while they were out shopping or dining, while others said they had been discriminated against by employers, colleagues, fellow students or government staff

The nine-year-old girl said her neighbour at the public housing estate where she lives had frightened her by following her and calling her a “mainland girl”. The girl’s mother said the neighbour had also smashed their windows and pounded on their door.

Soco’s Sze Lai-shan said new immigrants have become scapegoats for social problems that the government had failed to solve. She said some local people have accused the new immigrants of using up the city’s housing, medical and welfare resources.

“Many people don’t have adequate housing, they have been waiting a long time for medical [services] and housing… so when they see new immigrants here, they would feel they already don’t have enough and they don’t want to share,” she said.

She called on the government to amend the Race Discrimination Ordinance, which does not currently outlaw discrimination against immigrants from the mainland.

Sze noted that the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has long criticised the SAR government for failing to provide legal protection for the group against discrimination.

Soco also raised concerns about the mental wellbeing of new immigrants, saying many reported feeling unhappy with their lives in Hong Kong and respondents to their survey had shown serious signs of depression.