US President Joe Biden signed an order on Thursday offering temporary “safe haven” to thousands of Hong Kong residents, allowing them to remain in the United States. The move is in response to Beijing’s crackdown on opposition lawmakers and activists in the city after a national security law was imposed last year.

“This action demonstrates President Biden’s strong support for people in Hong Kong in the face of ongoing repression by the People’s Republic of China, and makes clear we will not stand idly by as the PRC breaks its promises to Hong Kong and to the international community,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday.

“We, alongside our allies and partners, strongly oppose the PRC’s wielding of the national security law to deny basic rights and freedoms, assault Hong Kong’s autonomy and undermine its remaining democratic processes and institutions.

“Given the politically motivated arrests and trials, the silencing of the media and the diminishing space for elections and democratic opposition, we will continue to take steps in support of people in Hong Kong.”

Biden’s order authorises the Department of Homeland Security to give Hong Kong residents 18-month “safe haven status”, allowing them to work in the US, and to “consider suspending” restrictions on Hongkongers holding F-1 student visas.

Dozens of opposition figures have been arrested and charged in the wake of the 2019 anti-government protests.

Last week the US State Department said it was deeply concerned that Chinese officials were deploying the security law “as a political weapon to silence dissenting voices in Hong Kong and suppress protected rights and fundamental freedoms” after Leon Tong Ying-kit was jailed for nine years
for riding his motorcycle into a group of police officers while flying a flag calling for the city’s “liberation”.

Tong was found guilty of terrorism and incitement to commit secession over his actions on July 1, 2020 – hours after the law took effect.

Both the Biden administration and Congress are under pressure from advocates to offer protections to Hongkongers either fleeing the city or already in the US.

Asked on Thursday why the administration had acted now rather than earlier, State Department spokesman Ned Price suggested it was the result of cumulative actions by the central and Hong Kong governments to erode civil liberties in the city.

“The ‘why now’ question is all around us,” Price said. “And virtually every week we have spoken of additional crackdowns, of additional incidents of repression, of continuing efforts by the part of PRC and Hong Kong authorities to assault the fundamental rights, freedoms and, again, the guarantees that … the people of Hong Kong were promised.”

Biden’s safe haven measures were originally slated to be rolled out in July, alongside economic sanctions the White House imposed on Chinese officials based in Hong Kong, according to a source familiar with the matter. But the protections were held up at the Department of Homeland Security because of “bureaucratic checks that needed to be done,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The hold-up was not “political”, the person said.

The sanctions on July 15 targeted seven Chinese officials in the government’s liaison office in Hong Kong, prompting China to impose sanctions on a number of people in the US, including former Commerce Department secretary Wilbur Ross.

Alongside the sanctions, the Biden administration also issued a joint advisory warning American businesses about risks to their operations and activities in Hong Kong. It reminded them that they were subject to the territory’s laws, including the national security law, under which foreign nationals, including one US citizen, have been arrested.

US President Joe Biden has signed an order allowing some Hong Kong residents in the United States to stay temporarily.

The US Treasury Department simultaneously sanctioned seven Chinese officials from the city’s liaison office, adding to the list of dozens of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials already sanctioned by Washington.

The US joins Britain and Canada in offering special immigration measures designed to accommodate Hongkongers who have left home in response to Beijing’s increasingly strict policies.

Britain announced a new British National (Overseas) visa programme immediately after Beijing imposed the national security law. It allows all Hong Kong residents with BN(O) status and their immediate family members to apply for a new category of visa that will allow them to live and work in Britain and, after six years, apply for citizenship.

The Canadian government issued new visa rules in November that allow any Hong Kong resident who has graduated from a Canadian university in the past five years, or those with equivalent foreign credentials, to apply to work in the country for up to three years.

Biden’s move on Thursday expands measures announced by the administration of his predecessor Donald Trump, when the State Department for the first time included Hong Kong in its annual refugee admissions proposal.

That announcement, in October, said the department was prioritising “people who have suffered or fear persecution on the basis of religion; for Iraqis whose assistance to the United States has put them in danger; for refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras; and for refugees from Hong Kong, Cuba and Venezuela”.

However, additional steps need to be taken to make Biden’s order more meaningful, and that will require congressional action, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration law professor at Cornell University.

The order amounts to deferred enforced departure, which differs from temporary protected status (TPS), a more open-ended designation that can only be granted by Congress.

In 1989, president George Bush granted Chinese students temporary safe haven after Beijing’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators, and Congress followed up by passing a law in 1992 to allow Chinese students in the US at the time of the Tiananmen Square violence to apply for permanent residence.

“If the human rights situation in Hong Kong worsens, Congress may need to do that here as well,” Yale-Loehr said.

Such an effort is already under way in the House of Representatives, where Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey, and Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, introduced the Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Act, which would offer Hongkongers threatened by the city’s national security law refugee status on an expedited basis, or temporary protected status for those already in the US.

The Malinowski-Kinzinger bill would also designate Hong Kong as a foreign state apart from mainland China for the purposes of immigration for five years.