‘At the bottom of priority list’: asylum seekers in Hong Kong wait up to 20 years for host countries to take them, despite clearing local checks
- Those who succeed in refugee claims face uncertainty as they are not a priority for resettlement
- Only 269 out of 22,696 asylum seekers have proved their claims for refugee status since 2014
Almost a decade after fleeing Egypt, former journalist Poules Zaki, 41, is still waiting to start a new life in Canada.
He is one of a tiny minority of asylum seekers in Hong Kong to succeed in achieving refugee status, the ticket to moving to a host country.
But despite getting his resettlement letter from the United Nations refugee agency more than four years ago, he is still in Hong Kong, scraping by on government handouts.
“Canada is a very far hope,” he said. “When they accepted my application, I thought I could start a new life there, I could work, I could do a lot of things!
“Then I realised I need to wait, for I don’t know how many years.”
He is one of only 269 asylum seekers who proved their claims for refugee status since 2014, accounting for under 1.2 per cent of the 22,696 cases received by the Immigration Department as of November last year.
