UK Expands Hong Kong Visa Scheme After Jimmy Lai Sentencing

The Home Office said the sentencing ‘shows how the Beijing-imposed National Security Law has criminalised dissent, prompting many to leave the territory.’

Jimmy Lai outside West Kowloon Magistrates' Court in Hong Kong, on Sept. 18, 2020. Sung Pi-lung/The Epoch Times

The UK on Feb. 9 announced it was expanding a visa scheme to allow tens of thousands more people to move from Hong Kong to the UK, following the sentencing of pro-democracy activist and British citizen Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong.

The UK Home Office said in a statement that adult children of British National (Overseas), or BN(O), status holders who were under 18 at the time of Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from Britain to China can now apply for the visa independently of their parents.