Hong Kong Protests Fuel Emigration Wave
HONG KONG — More than three months of ongoing anti-government protests in Hong Kong, involving regular violent clashes between protesters and police, have proven too much for some residents. Many are thinking hard about emigrating; local finance worker Adrian Chan and his family are among them.
For Willis Fu, senior case officer at the city’s Goldmax Immigration Consulting, it’s a similar picture.
“Since June, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the number of enquiries,” he says. “We’ve received almost 100 enquiries daily from various sources and have handled over 50 applications monthly.”
But the political unrest is not the only push factor for those seeking to emigrate. Exorbitant house prices and high cost of living are also major contributors to an uptick in emigration in recent years. For the ninth year running, the city was ranked the world’s least affordable housing market by U.S. planning consultancy Demographia.
