User talk:Givemeana1402/sandbox

Definition
“TYPE Ⅱ Babies”, refers to the types of babies in which their parents are both mainlanders, while the babies are intrinsically born to be Hong Kong citizens. They automatically own HK’s ethnic identity to become the new HongKongers.

Development
The first generation of Type II babies can be dated back to 2001. HKCFA and the High Court of HK have approved HK permanent identity of type II babies who was borned since 1997.

There was a rapid increase in type II babies in HK. It kept raising from 620 people in 2001 to 25000 in 2008. The raise of type II babies has became a major source of population growth.

The population expansion of the type II babies has lead to resources allocation problems, like the insufficiency of hospital beds. In order to ease the tensions, the HK Hospital Authority has announced starting from 9th April 2011 until the end of the year, Hong Kong's public hospitals would no longer accept the appointment of non-local pregnant women. This policy is designed to limit the number of mainland women in Hong Kong to have children, once issued immediately aroused strong repercussions both pregnant women.

Current situations
Starting from 2013, the government has reserved the entire public hospital beds for local pregnant women, while non-local pregnant women reservation will not be accepted. Private hospitals has also agreed to stop accepting delivery appointment from doubly non-permanent resident pregnant.

Law enforcement department has continued strengthening the inspections and prosecutions work, tackling cases of Mainland pregnant women giving birth in Hong Kong. After strengthening the immigration measures in the end of 2011, the entry of mainland women giving birth in public emergency room and private hospital with no reservation has dropped dramatically, from an average of 150 cases per month in September to December 2011 to only 22 cases in January 2013.

Reasons
1) Implementation of Individual Visit Scheme

According to Wikipedia(2015), “Individual Visit Scheme” is a policy introduced in 2003 that “allows travellers from Mainland China to visit HK on an individual basis”, which facilitates mainland couples to freely give birth in HK. Moreover, their mainland relatives can freely travel between HK and Mainland within each 3 months.

2) Benefits offered in HK that attract mainlanders

With HKSAR passport, citizens can travel to more than 120 countries without a visa, easily going abroad for study or business purpose, even for immigration. For instance, Canada provides loose immigrant conditions for HongKongers. Schools in HK adopts Western education modes, which bilingual education is implemented since kindergarten and students can access to the world language at an early stage. Besides, there are many internationally recognised universities, which provide wide-range of degrees for students. Furthermore, HK has introduced the policy of “Twelve-Year-Free-Education” from 2008 and “the government will fully subsidise students in public primary and secondary schools”. The Medical Care Assurance and Social Security System in HK are well-organised. All public hospitals are open for citizens, providing an assured security for their health, which outpatient and inpatient costs are highly subsidised by the government. Moreover, citizens can enjoy various social welfares like Retirement Pension and Old Age Allowance.

3) Leniency of population policy

Hong Kong government has never implemented any policies to limit family size. Once the pregnant women have proof of legal residence, their babies will immediately be given the identity as Hong Kong permanent residents.

Influences
Type Ⅱ babies

Type Ⅱ babies can enjoy superior welfare of Hong Kong, have more overseas opportunities. They are more likely to receive excellent tertiary education as the academic pressure is less than that in mainland. Since most of them live in Shenzhen, they cannot get enough sleep or attend most after-school activities due to everyday boundary-crossing, which is bad for their overall development. Kids may be in danger and affected to behave poorly around checkpoints—some were used by parallel traders for smuggling. Some kids have difficulty following the courses in this multi-language environment, or getting integrating with both mainland and Hong Kong society, as they are not full-time residents without sense of belonging.

Hong Kong society

These babies can help Hong Kong become an education hub blended with various students, relieving the pressure of aging society and promoting balanced population development. The economy can be promoted as housings and insurances are potential purchases for parents. However, inconvenience is caused to local residents—booking beds in hospital is harder for local pregnant women, competition for school places is keener , etc.

Families with these children

Most parents cannot play a positive role in children’s homework due to the gap between Hong Kong and mainland education.

Schools

Schools have to take care of these babies and guarantee their security during commuting, which can increase the responsibilities and workloads of teachers. According to education policy, schools with insufficient enrollments should be closed. Therefore, many schools enroll more these babies to keep opening.

HongKongers’ and mainlanders’ response
Mainland citizens: They are willing to give birth in HK for higher living quality and better welfare. Also, there is a higher probability for their children to get into a front-ranking university in HK, rather than competing with 1.3 billion people in China. Thus, they want to get Hong Kong identity for their children.

HK citizens: Most of them are not pleased with Type II babies because they think Type II babies will take away the limited resources in HK, like academic degree, hospital bed, housing, etc. Some citizens even organize an ‘anti-doubly-non-permanent-resident-pregnant-women’ association and held a protest at St. Paul's Hospital in 2012, blaming private hospital only accept delivery appointment of mainland pregnant women just for earning money.

Government’s Solution
In order to comfort HK citizens’ concern about the resource allocation problem, HK government had implemented the ‘zero quota’ policy, which the law enforcement departments will intercept and take forcible actions against Mainland pregnant women whose husbands are not local residents, and to oppose cases of Mainland pregnant women coming to HK to give birth through illegal means. Besides, the HK government also established a liaison mechanism with the Guangdong authorities in February 2012 for enhancing the exchange of intelligence in order to prevent the problem of mainland pregnant women gate-crashing the A&EDs to give birth in HK without delivery booking.