About 38,000 citizens of Hong Kong under the age of 18 have filed an application for UK’s British National (Overseas) visa scheme, however, the majority of requests are from residents in their prime working years.
According to the figures published by Bloomberg on Wednesday, of the total of 142,000 citizens of Hong Kong who applied for such a program, 36,000 were in this age bracket, VisaGuide.World reports.
It was reported that for a period between January 31, 2021, when the scheme opened and June 30 this year, a total of 38,600 applications for BN(O) visas were from Hongkongers under the age of 18 of them 16 per cent were filed from the UK.
According to the report of South Morning China Post, Hongkongers aged 35 to 44 accounted for the biggest group at 32,600 with a total of 13 per cent of applications made by citizens of this country. At the same time, the third-largest group were those aged 45 to 54, who made a total of 27,800 applications, of which 14 per cent were filed in Britain.
Citizens of Hong Kong who filed an application for BN(O) status aged 25-54 made up 55 per cent or 78,100 applications.
As of June this year, 133,124 Hongkongers have been approved for the citizenship scheme since the program was first introduced, according to the figures provided by the Home Office in August this year.
Authorities in the United Kingdom granted BN(O) status to 3.4 million residents from Hong Kong-born before 1997.
It was reported that the UK plans to extend the BN(O) visa program later this month in order to permit Hongkongers born after July 1, 1997, who have at least one parent with BN(O) status to apply independently in order to settle in the country. At present, only persons born before June 30, 1997, one day before the city’s handover, are eligible to benefit from this program.
In this regard, Professor Paul Yip Siu-Fai, from the University of Hong Kong’s faculty of social sciences, has said that 50,000 families either planned to or had moved to the United Kingdom since the program was first introduced.
“A lot of people might come for a couple of years, then they will leave. But now we are losing this group who should be staying. That is something that we have to be more careful [of],” he said.
It was reported that the smallest group of people who applied for this program were over the age of 65 or a total of 6,000 applications.
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