Hong Kong at Night

Time magazine has a big piece on protests in Hong Kong. Thousands of women with white-painted faces and black robes are filling the streets.

They're not marching about human rights or freedom of religion -- they're marching about government regulations making things difficult for workers.

Domestic workers, in this case. Maids. Not an occupation I'd ever thought would come up in a country run by a party that has "communist" in its name.

Six days a week, these migrant workers are the city's "domestic helpers" — amahs in Cantonese — earning about $450 a month as maids, nannies and cooks in nearly 200,000 Hong Kong households. On Sundays, thousands of Filipinas take over the commercial hub, the Central district. They swarm sidewalks and elevated walkways to spend their sole day off picnicking, playing cards, singing and swapping gossip.

For a couple of past Sundays, however, the amahs have also marched. They're protesting new legislation in the Philippines that requires maids who work overseas to undergo two weeks of official training and tests. The $300 associated cost comes out of the amah's pocket, which is what has Hong Kong's Filipinas up in arms. They're quick to note that they already pay the government placement fees while, at the same time, Hong Kong officials cut their minimum wage by $50 a month two years ago. "How will we afford this on our small salaries?" asks Dolores Balladares, the march's organizer. "Our government just wants to make our lives more burdened and more miserable."

Labor disputes? With immigrant workers? Next thing you know, they'll be having people get married just to get a visa! Oh....

Zhou Renping, 44, paid 50,000 yuan (6,450 US dollars) to marry a Hong Kong woman last year and was arrested at the border when he arrived in the territory on January 28, claiming he was visiting her.

At a hearing in Hong Kong's Shatin court Wednesday, Zhou pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and making false representations to immigration officers. He was jailed for 15 months.

His conviction followed a series of recent cases in which men from mainland China have been arrested after paying to marry Hong Kong women for residency rights.

Hong Kong's weird status as China/not-China aside, it's not that different from the U.S. after all....

But adoptive parents might take special interest in the last paragraph of that article:

The city is currently also taking action to stop pregnant women sneaking across the border from China to Hong Kong to give birth so their children would qualify for residency.