WHEN ALEX Mak was asked to swear an oath of loyalty to Hong Kong’s government in 2020, he decided to leave. The 37-year-old civil servant had taken part in street protests the year before, when some 2m Hong Kongers had demonstrated against a proposed law enabling extradition to mainland China. Since then life in Hong Kong had become even more “suffocating”, he said. In 2021 he got his opportunity, and moved to Britain under a visa scheme opened to Hong Kongers that year. Like most of the 200,000 or so newcomers to have arrived under this scheme, he is highly educated and speaks excellent English. Yet integration has not been easy.

After Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, Britain took a hands-off approach to its former colony. That changed in June 2020, when the Chinese government imposed a national-security law in Hong Kong that Britain deemed a “violation” of the handover agreement. In response the Conservative government opened a “bespoke immigration route” under which some 5.4m of the territory’s 7.5m people were eligible to apply for a British Nationals Overseas (BNO) visa, which offered a path to citizenship.

The scheme was pricey enough to limit the numbers—a five-year visa costs nearly £20,000 ($25,000) for a couple with one child—and gave émigrés no recourse, at least in normal circumstances, to welfare benefits or other public funds. Even so, more Hong Kongers have settled in Britain on humanitarian visas since 2021 than any other nationality, including Ukrainians.