Adopting HK citizens is a far easier sell than Syrians. They already speak English, are highly educated, wealthy, westernized, and have special status in UK law.

Letting a ton of refugees in is a large burden on the host country. They don't share British culture and values, tend to have no education or marketable skills, are in poor health, don't speak the language, need a lot of government support, and depress wages for already poor citizens of the host country. It should still be done for humanitarian reasons but there's a lot of pushback from citizens for reasonable concerns.

No they don't. According to the Hong Kong government's 2011 census only 41% of residents spoke English moderately well (not even fluently, just moderately well). 20% reported not being able to speak any English whatsoever; not even a few sentences.

Only 57% of residents of Hong Kong considered themselves "bilingual".

Only 30% of students attended an EMI school (English as a Medium of Instruction).

And I doubt the numbers have become more favorable to English in the decade since that census.

You have to consider which ones are being adopted. It is overwhelmingly the educated and wealthy ones who will go, and a far higher percentage of them speak English.

==About 350,000 UK passport holders, and 2.6 million others eligible, will be able to come to the UK for five years.==

==Under the government's plans, all British Overseas Nationals and their dependants will be given right to remain in the UK, including the right to work and study, for five years. At this point, they will be able to apply for settled status, and after a further year, seek citizenship.==

Do you know (or care to speculate) on how those eligible for this offer would compare to residents captured by the census?

e.g. Did lots of people arrive from the mainland post-97, who might drive down the average? Or perhaps those with overseas-british papers are older, and the younger generation speaks much more English? I don't know enough to guess.

That said, the most obvious parallel here is the indians expelled from Uganda [1], who were essentially the merchant class of that country. And I believe have done very well in England.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Asians_from_Ugand

Most studies does not account for what people dislike in immigration : fracturing social contract and communities shattering. Frictions in the salad bowl are poorly translated to economic figures but folks live it everyday.

So look carefully at what each study says and its perimeter.

One should curb down its sureness of that matter.

It may be true that all kinds of immigration greatly benefit host countries in the long term, but this is more debatable than that allowing wealthy, liberal, educated immigrants is a net benefit to host countries.

We can argue about the long-term benefits of open borders. I don't believe eggsnbacon1 was stating a position there--more like pointing out that there are some short-term costs that generate popular pushback. But ushering in the cream of the crop is obviously beneficial; it's a no-brainer.

Also, if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?

Clearly we have different ideas about reasonableness.

> if it's population you're concerned about, shouldn't you also worry about people having babies?

I do, especially in those parts of the world in which fertility is particularly high yet ability to actually look after those children is particularly low

Trying to apply this same logic to a country that's stagnant economically or that already has a fast growing population would be silly.

It was the OP who came up with the example of France to say that is not true.

> It’s the reverse, the burden is definitive and ever growing.

So there are two possibilities

* The French example is one of the very few exceptions -> This means the point OP is trying to make is kind of useless. Exceptions are present in almost all the theories.

* French example is what will happen in all most all the countries -> In that case OP's point becomes just ironic.

That's not nothing.

Please enlighten me. As a German, I have yet to see even a statement of any German politician to do as the Brits do. Is there any non-english speaking country being "proactive"?

https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1535138-20200701.h...

And the schools they were sent to are largely the same as the schools that the people who run the UK went to (at least when there's a Conservative government).

So when the cabinet visualise "someone from Hong Kong", they think "one of us".

https://twitter.com/SimonCh15198572/status/12783360604063375...