Disadvantages Of Asylum Seekers In Hong Kong

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Even though Hong Kong is a small and crowded place with limited resources to take care of refugees and asylum seekers, they should not be mistreated in the city. They receive a minimal monthly assistance with which nobody could survive in this expensive city. They have been denied the right to work, to study and even to volunteer. Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region (SAR). It is a city of China but stayed under British administration for hundred years (1897 - 1997) and handed over to China twenty years ago. Because of being a small city (2,754 km2) with a very high population density (7.393 million), Hong Kong government talk about their struggle to accommodate people coming into the city. Therefore, the city became a terrible place …show more content…

They are given a monthly assistance for accommodation, food and transportation allowance. For each month, they receive a food card containing 1,200hkd (not cash) to be used to shop food in a designated supermarket. It means refugees receive 40hkd (around 5.1 USD) for meal per day. They also receive a housing assistance of 1,500hkd together with 300hkd for water and electricity bill, but not in cash. The money is paid to the house owner or the agency directly as refugees in Hong Kong are not allowed to receive cash. They also get also get travel allowance of between 200hkd to 350hkd depending on the living address of the refugee. With all this put together, we can see that refugees and asylum seekers can get at most 3,350hkd (around 430 USD) per month from the government as assistance to live in one of the expensive city in the world. In Hong Kong, a subdivided flat of 100 - 150 square feet cost at least 3,500hkd. It's impossible to survive in Hong Kong with this minimal help from the government but, this is what refugees and asylum seekers have to manage and struggle with for all the years they will stay in Hong Kong. But if it cost too much to assist the refugees and asylum seekers as the processing time of the cases is too long, wouldn't it be better the government allow them to work (even if restricted to some fields of …show more content…

For as many years refugees can be stocked in Hong Kong, they can only be fed and sleep and do nothing else. One of my asylum seeker friends one day told me he felt like being a pet. He was an engineer back in his home country, but now in Hong Kong as a refugee, he can only eat, sleep and keep waiting for years. This way, thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are being wasted and left in destitute. It’s so heartbreaking to see years pass and as a human, we cannot be productive or at least contribute to the city we are living in even if it’s temporary. Volunteering is illegal in Hong Kong for the refugees and asylum seekers. The government thinks people will take paid employment and say they are volunteering. Everything is done in a way that people will be discouraged to seek asylum in Hong Kong. But the number of refugees and asylum seekers keep increasing, showing that the making refugees and asylum seekers suffer is not a good strategy as they keep coming to Hong

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