Hemyar Saad knew no-one in Hong Kong – nor did he speak English or Cantonese – when his family fled unrest in the Middle East and took him to the city in 2014.
“The first priority for me was to be safe,” said Saad, now 25, who has worked as a business analyst. “The second thing… I wanted to resume my life. I wanted to adapt to a new society.”
Saad is among the handful of successful applicants who have had their claims for “non-refoulement” – the right not to be deported to a home country because of the threat of persecution – substantiated by authorities. He has recently relocated to Canada but declined to specify the country he left in 2014.
See also: Hong Kong asylum seekers face bureaucratic maze and deportation under tightened policy
Hong Kong does not grant asylum-seekers refugee status, but many displaced by conflicts and threats to their safety in the country they were born in see the city as a stepping stone to relocation elsewhere, partly because it is easy to get a visa to visit.
The relocation process, however, can take more than a decade. Saad waited nearly 10 years, but said he had heard many stories of people spending 15 to 20 years in the city as asylum- seekers.
The prospects of eventual success are slim – only 1.2 per cent of some 23,600 applicants have had their non-refoulement claims substantiated since a screening mechanism was introduced in 2014, according to official figures.
Official data showed about 15,200 non-refoulement claimants remained in Hong Kong as of December, with some awaiting the results of appeals to an independent appeal board or a court. Among them, about 8,700 were held in the city’s two immigration detention facilities.
Asylum-seekers struggle to secure access to employment and education, with most living off a monthly government allowance of around HK$3,300. They are not normally allowed to work regardless of the outcome of their non-refoulement claim, but the Director of Immigration can approve employment on a discretionary basis. Data in 2020 showed about 200 approvals.
Saad said such problems need long-term attention. But everyday life for asylum-seekers can be improved if they are connected to others in a similar situation.
“As a new arrival, you are not connected to the community… to the people who may help, who may give you a direction,” he said. Over the past decade, Saad dedicated himself to building such a link.
“I would help the new arrivals not to face what I had,” he said.
Before departing for Canada, Saad met HKFP to talk about his efforts to connect asylum-seekers with their predecessors and with other ethnic minority communities in the city.
Language
Saad was able to enrol in a public school when he arrived aged 15.
Currently, asylum-seekers aged under 18 – whether they fled to Hong Kong with their parents or were born locally – are entitled to attend government school. Those over 18 must pay for education, which most cannot afford.
But coming from an Arabic-speaking background, Saad was unable to speak the city’s mainstream languages and his school enrolled him in a six-month intensive English course. Thanks to this and his own hard work, he could communicate in simple English afterwards.
But the first year was still tough: “I didn’t know anybody… and even if I got to know someone, I couldn’t communicate because my English wasn’t good.”
The language barrier poses a great challenge to asylum-seekers, Saad said, cutting them off from useful information and resources.
“[When] an asylum-seeker or refugee comes here, he doesn’t know how to communicate. Or he doesn’t know [where] to go or who can bridge a way to, for example, the immigration [department] and the church.”
That was his experience of early days in Hong Kong, which has a relatively small Arab community.
Connections
Saad soon realised that while the city’s asylum-seekers were separated from each other, they might possess knowledge or resources that others needed.
“When I came here, I found out many [asylum-seeker] students had already been here for 10 years. Then there was an adult community which didn’t have any access to education.”
“I make the connection. I bring the young refugees and asylum-seekers who are already studying at schools, and they bring others together and we teach English.”
At age 17, he and four others co-founded an NGO called Learning Together. At weekends, they volunteered to teach English to fellow asylum-seekers.
Many were adult women, who had less access to education in their home countries and mostly stayed at home while their husbands were out trying to make ends meet. His group also served young refugees by giving them IT classes.
The project gradually expanded to ethnic minority communities – including Nepali, Pakistani, and Indian groups – already living in Hong Kong.
Saad said the integration of asylum-seekers into existing ethnic minority communities could increase their chances of securing resettlement abroad or acquiring residency rights in the city.
“Ethnic minorities likely come from the same places [as asylum-seekers]… let’s say you’ve been here for many years, and you get with working in Canada… So if you get a good relationship with [a refugee], you may have him to go to Canada for resettlement,” he said.
“Sometimes maybe a refugee can marry someone from the existing community… and get a Hong Kong ID,” he added.
Self-empowerment
The project has also had a transformative effect on Saad himself, opening up new opportunities and giving him a sense of satisfaction. One of the NGO’s co-founders introduced him to the city’s social justice community in 2018 after hearing about his interest in promoting racial equity. Saad then obtained a fellowship offered by the Resolve Foundation, an NGO advocating inclusiveness and diversity.
He also received financial support from Resolve to set up a programme that funded young asylum-seekers seeking higher education, allowing them in turn to serve and teach others in the community.
Interviewed in early March, Saad was excited about his imminent departure for Canada and keen to continue his social work there.
“Through these 10 years, I lived a lot, and I believe it’s [rewarding],” he said. “I know how people in this community face difficulties in their lives, and it’s given me a sense of how I can support them in the future.”
“Because I tasted it, I know how it feels.”
Help safeguard press freedom & keep HKFP free for all readers by supporting our team
