History | London urged Lisbon not to grant nationality to Macau citizens

Newly declassified documents have revealed that British officials were concerned about an influx of immigration from Macau to Britain in the late 1980s, following the handover of the former Portuguese enclave to China.

The documents, obtained by the South China Morning Post, show that the then-British home secretary, Douglas Hurd, had urged the government to put pressure on Portugal to restrict its practice of granting nationality to inhabitants of Macau, lest it encourage their counterparts in Hong Kong to request the same treatment.

In a letter dated October 16, 1985, Hurd expressed his worry that the negotiations underway for the Macau 1999 handover to China would set a precedent for Britain to take in more immigrants from Hong Kong, as well as open the door to those wishing to leave Macau.

“With Macau perhaps returning to the control of China at the same time as Hong Kong, it may well be that there will be many Macanese of Portuguese nationality who will decide that Europe rather than Macau is the place to be and if, as I understand it, they speak English, they will naturally seek to come here if the way is open for them to do so,” the home secretary wrote in the letter.

He speculated that residents of Macau would try to use their Portuguese passports as a means of gaining entry into the United Kingdom, a course made possible following Portugal’s 1986 admission to the European Union.

Hurd also noted that “having succeeded in avoiding large scale immigration from Hong Kong as a consequence of the negotiations […] we really should not drift into a position in which the unintended consequence of Portuguese accession is the potential immigration of large numbers from Macau.”

Studies at the time suggested that around 85,000 Macau residents would be entitled to register for Portuguese nationality, and Hurd feared many of them would use their admission into Europe to travel unimpeded to the United Kingdom.

Moreover, Lisbon’s policy of granting passports and full citizenship rights to anyone born in Macau before November 20, 1981 – as well as the fact that nationality could be inherited by their descendants – meant that many more in Macau might immigrate to Europe in the future.

Residents of neighboring Hong Kong have argued that they should have been permitted the same right of abode treatment as their Macau counterparts. However, Britain did not have the same laws as Portugal regarding citizenship rights of its colonies’ inhabitants.

“Surely it is clear that we may come under some pressure, because of the position of Portuguese nationals in Macau, to allow freer access to the United Kingdom to Hong Kong [British Dependent Territories Citizens] than is presently permitted,” continued Hurd in the letter. “I am sure we should resist such pressure but in doing so we are likely to attract a lot of adverse criticism.”

According to the South China Morning Post, Britain put pressure on Lisbon to change its policy of granting nationality to colonial residents of Macau, with a view to deterring those in Hong Kong from asking for the same. But the Portuguese government refused to capitulate, arguing that it was the individuals’ lawful right to acquire citizenship if they chose to do so.

The United Kingdom implemented a different system for the inhabitants of its former colony. The government, then-led by Margaret Thatcher, conferred residency rights to around 50,000 Hong Kong inhabitants and their families, while offering only the British National (Overseas – BNO) passports to others.

The BNO passport is considered by many critics to represent a ‘second-class’ document. There are around 3.4 million holders of these passports in Hong Kong.

Several prominent British politicians, as well as a number of Hong Kong activists, have lobbied for the current administration in London to empower BNO passport holders with the right to permanently reside within the United Kingdom. Their calls have fallen on deaf ears. DB