Hong Kong court overturns landmark ruling on maids' residency

HONG KONG – The court of appeals here overturned yesterday a landmark ruling that allowed foreign maids to claim residency. 

In its 66-page ruling, the appellate court ruled that the immigration ordinance that excludes foreign domestic helpers from the category of ordinary residents is constitutional. Filipina maid Evangeline Vallejos – who had been working in Hong Kong since 1986 – had challenged the ordinance before the court of first instance in September last year and won.

“I conclude that section 2(4)(a)(vi) of the Immigration Ordinance does not infringe article 24(2)(4) of the Basic Law. It is constitutionally valid,” Chief Judge Andrew Cheung said in the ruling. Judges Robert Tang and Frank Stock concurred with Cheung’s judgment.

The Basic Law states that permanent residents include “persons not of Chinese nationality who have entered Hong Kong with valid travel documents, have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years, and have taken Hong Kong as their place of permanent residence.”

The immigration ordinance, on the other hand, states that “a person shall not be treated as ordinary resident in Hong Kong while employed as a domestic helper who is from outside Hong Kong.”

In September last year, Court of First Instance Judge Johnson Lam ruled that the Immigration ordinance is inconsistent with the Basic Law. 

Ruling in favor of the government, Cheung stressed that the legislature holds the power to define the constitutional concept of “ordinary resident” and deny permanent residency status to certain categories of persons to exercise immigration control.

“A foreign domestic helper’s stay in Hong Kong is for a very special, limited purpose from society’s point of view – to meet society’s acute demand for domestic helpers which cannot be satisfactorily met by the local labor market. Hence, their stays in Hong Kong are highly regulated so as to ensure that they are here to fulfill the special, limited purpose for which they have been allowed to come here in the first place, and no more,” Cheung said.

Vallejos’ lawyer Mark Daly said they are likely to challenge the latest ruling before the Court of Final Appeal.

“We will have to go through the judgment in detail with our client. We will likely go to the Court of Final Appeal. We are confident with our arguments so we will continue to fight for justice,” Daly said in a phone interview.

Another of Vallejos’ lawyers, Gladys Li, had argued in court that in a domestic legislation denying foreign domestic helpers the constitutional right to permanent residency in 1997, the Legislative Council went beyond the constitution.