By: Kelly Pang、Malick GaiEdited by: Simran Vaswani、Jasmine Tse

Government subsidies to public schools to encourage the enrollment of non-Chinese speaking students over the last seven years will be assessed on their effectiveness, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said in her policy address today.  However, the Audit Commission already published a report in March, revealing that enrollment of non-Chinese speaking students increased by 12.6% from 2015 to 2019. Government spending to support non-Chinese speaking students also increased by 87% to HK$456.3 million in the same period. However, 17% of the schools which received subsidies over the five-year period were revealed to have “utilised less than 70% of the total amount of the grant provided,” according to the report. “Money is being put into NGOs and education for ethnic minorities, but it's at a very surface level,” said Jeffrey Andrews, manager at the Christian Action Centre for Refugees, who was the first ethnic minority to run for the Legislative Council.  Furthermore, the audit found the Education Bureau did not visit or monitor the use of the subsidies at 15% of primary, secondary and special schools. The Education Bureau has also “not set training requirements for primary, secondary and special schools on teaching non-Chinese speaking students Chinese as a second language,” the report revealed.  Lam said in the policy address that she hoped “language will no longer be a barrier for non‑Chinese speakers to integrate into the local community and enter the job market.” The government also introduced and implemented a non-Chinese Speaking Grant in 2020, providing over HK$450 million to cater educational needs of ethnic minorities. The funding allows non-Chinese speaking students to learn Chinese to ease the language barrier. However, other reports have made similar conclusions to the Audit Commission, highlighting the ineffectiveness of government funding for non-Chinese speaking students. “Support measures for primary and secondary schools should …

Jean Francois Harvey from Harvey Law Group, along with over 60 immigration companies, were at the International Immigration and Property Expo on March 27. However, what Mr Harvey witnessed there left him dumbfounded. “I saw consultants openly telling people to buy start-up visas. I also saw others squarely selling jobs — it may not be a real job, but it’ll get them the visa,” Mr Harvey recounted. Paying money for a job offer is illegal in Canada, but such blatant advertising at the expo shows how many people are not aware of Canadian immigration policies, making them susceptible to misinformation and fraud. Immigration fraud has long been an issue in Hong Kong, as Mr Harvey observed throughout his 29 years as an immigration lawyer. “But now, there’s a big increase in interest in immigration, so there’s more misinformation than ever,” said Mr Harvey. The number of Hong Kong passport holders applying for temporary or permanent residency in Canada reached 8,121 in 2020, hitting its highest point in at least five years despite border closures because of Covid-19, according to Reuters. And with misinformation comes fraud. Canadian Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marco Mendicino released a statement on March 5 to commemorate the government’s Fraud Prevention campaign, saying, “Immigration fraud targets people who want to come to Canada in good faith. Sadly, the pandemic has exacerbated these troubling activities, with new ways for dishonest individuals to defraud clients.” A 2019 investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exposed how an immigration consultancy targeted Chinese nationals and charged them up to $170,000 Canadian dollars (HK$1,052,754) for a fake job. CBC also found that Hong Kong had reported “high rates of fraud or suspected fraud, and only 15-22% of arranged employment offers were found to be genuine.” Nancy Caron, a spokesperson for Immigration, …