Biden Signs Memorandum Extending Temporary Safe Haven to Hong Kong Residents in U.S.

President Joe Biden has signed a memorandum extending impermanent harmless haven to Hong Kong residents successful the United States amid China’s crackdown that has undermined ideology successful the region. The memorandum defers removal for the adjacent 18 months.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said successful a connection that the memorandum directs “the deferral of removal of definite Hong Kong residents who are contiguous successful the United States, giving them a impermanent harmless haven.”

Psaki said the memorandum “demonstrates President Biden’s beardown enactment for radical successful Hong Kong successful the look of ongoing repression by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and makes wide we volition not basal idly by arsenic the PRC breaks its promises to Hong Kong and to the planetary community.”

“Given the politically motivated arrests and trials, the silencing of the media, and the diminishing the abstraction for elections and antiauthoritarian opposition, we volition proceed to instrumentality steps successful enactment of radical successful Hong Kong,” she added.

The governmental concern successful Hong Kong has mostly deteriorated since  the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the controversial Hong Kong nationalist information law, which criminalizes immoderate enactment that could represent a “threat” to nationalist security.

“The Chinese authorities forced the instrumentality done without immoderate accountability oregon transparency: it was passed conscionable weeks aft it was archetypal announced, bypassing Hong Kong’s section legislature, and the substance was kept concealed from the nationalist and allegedly adjacent the Hong Kong authorities until aft it was enacted,” arsenic noted successful a study from Amnesty International.

Thousands person fled governmental repression successful Hong Kong since Beijing has cracked down connected pro-democracy protesters and made sweeping arrests.