Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(Claiborne 1991). By 2006 HSBC had 40 branches in Vancouver and 25 in
Toronto and its largest customer base continued to be immigrants from
Hong Kong, including returnees to Asia who were maintaining a Canadian
account, in the words of a manager, 'as a safe haven or for their retirement
funds' (Li et al. 2007). Branch locations matched the geographical distribu-
tion of ethnic Chinese residents; in the ethnoburb of Richmond one branch
announced that 'we can speak Cantonese; we can speak Mandarin; we can
speak Fuzhounese; we can speak Minnan', while at a second outlet, the
Mandarin Centre branch, each staff member speaks at least one Chinese
dialect (Li et al. 2007).
Calculations in Hong Kong and Taiwan
Transnational banking and, as we shall see later, transnational property mar-
keting facilitated the transfer of economic resources across the Pacific. But
while necessary they were not sufficient inducements for the re-location of
millionaire migrants. Nor did eager suitors in North America and Australasia
provide adequate reasons for movement through their business immigration
programmes. Rather, local anxieties at the origin joined inducements at the
destination to motivate wealthy households to join the exodus from East
Asia. These motivations were strong enough that for a decade from the late
1980s, Hong Kong was the leading source of immigrants to Canada.
The annual flow of migrants leaving Hong Kong shows break points that
may be correlated against key events in Hong Kong as well as in Canada
(Figure 3.1). Synchronicity is not perfect because there is a delay between
application for a visa, its granting, and a household's eventual arrival in
Canada after settling their affairs in Hong Kong. Visa processing times are
also of variable length; in 2004-05 it was still taking the Hong Kong
Consulate General almost 24 months to adjudicate just half of current busi-
ness immigrant applications, and it is probable that during much busier
periods in the 1990s the delay would have been at least as great.
13
Marked
increases in Canadian landings from Hong Kong occurred in 1987, 1988
and 1990, with a broad plateau of sustained landings of 30,000 or above for
each year between 1992 and 1996. After 1997, numbers tail off dramatically
and since 2001 have not exceeded 2,000 in any year. Certain important
events may be related to these trends. In 1984 the signing of the Sino-
British Joint Declaration confirmed the territory's post-colonial destiny in
1997 and unsettled some wealthy households. In 1986 welcoming signals
from Canada included the establishment of the investor stream of the BIP
and the launch of Expo 86 as a promotional loss leader in Vancouver. With
these motivational aids, applications for immigration filed in 1987 at
Canada's Hong Kong Consulate General had risen to almost 40,000, and
