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AbstractCanada's migration regime prioritizes the admission of young skilled immigrants while restricting elderly immigrants constructed as non‐contributing dependents. We review and compare the current pathways to family reunification for elderly immigrants. Based on interviews with 16 Chinese skilled immigrant mothers and eight sponsored (grand)parents in Edmonton and Ottawa, we highlight the contributions made by elderly Chinese immigrants to social reproduction, intergenerational cultural preservation, and various forms of transnational support. We also reveal the financial and emotional costs incurred by young skilled immigrants who sought to sponsor their elderly parents for permanent residency. Based on these rich conversations, we propose two policy recommendations to reduce the pressure on sponsoring family members and create opportunities for elderly immigrants to access gainful employment.

University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 2015/010 ; When a government announces that an existing law will be amended and that the amendment, when finally enacted by the legislature, will be made effective from the announcement date, it is natural and inevitable that private entities will conduct their activities on the basis of the amended law immediately upon the announcement date, notwithstanding the announcement's lack of any formal legal effect. This practice of effecting immediate de facto legal changes is known derisively, but perhaps aptly, as "legislation by press release." This Article utilizes the recent use of legislation by press release to implement the Buyer's Stamp Duty in Hong Kong as a case study to critically examine the legality and normative considerations of this increasingly common but under-theorized practice. Legally, this Article argues that the prospective notice provided by the initial announcement ensures the practice's legality in all but an explicit prohibition of retrospective civil legislation. Normatively, this Article highlights the various criteria of clarity, consistency, necessity and political dynamic that affect the desirability of the practice. On a broader note, the formal retrospectivity inherent in the practice - but which does not disrupt the reliance interests of private entities - provides a useful reexamination of the conventional aversion towards retrospective laws. ; postprint

Preferential treatment in government procurement, also known as procurement linkages, is a con-troversial yet popular tool to achieve socio-economic goals, most importantly, affirmative action for certain targeted groups. This Article utilizes the recently enacted small-medium enterprise ("SME") procurement linkages in China to examine the pitfalls in the design of procurement linkages. Two major deficiencies of the Chinese regime impede effective implementation of procurement linkages. First, loopholes in the Chinese regulatory regime allow large enterprises to usurp the benefits meant for SMEs through the use of wholly owned subsidiaries and other corporate arrangements. Second, aggrieved suppliers face stringent procedural requirements and limited civil remedies in their attempts to enforce procurement linkages, while the government procuring authority has a perverse incentive to overlook and even acquiesce in the violations. This Article argues that these deficiencies reflect the mistaken assumption that procurement linkages should be treated as simply a conventional type of government procurement. Effective reform would have to go beyond strengthening the enforcement mechanisms for conventional government procurement and entails specific legislative action to tackle the particular requirements of the preferential policies. ; postprint

Proselytisation restrictions are typically subjected to two objections.First, these restrictions curtail religious liberty and impede religious truth-seeking. Second, these restrictions tend to favour politically dominant religions and discriminate against minority religions. The restrictions on offensive religious propagation in Singapore thus present an interesting departure in which sanctioned religions are not politically marginalised religions, whereas protected religions include numerical minority religions that are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged. This article utilises the atypical case study of Singapore to highlight the limitations of the two typical objections toward proselytisation restrictions. In particular, the emphasis on religious truth-seeking underpinning these objections is premised upon a distinct set of religious worldviews not shared by the majority of religions in Singapore. This article posits that if religious truthseeking is no longer the accepted normative goal, then there may be circumstances in which some limited and even-handed restrictions on offensive religious propagation are sufficiently justified on the grounds of social peace and harmony. ; published_or_final_version

Regulatory schemes that mandate historical preservation for private property are increasingly common. This article employs the attempt to preserve Ho Tung Gardens as a case study to examine problems in the design of compensation measures for such schemes. The compensation provision of Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance (Cap 53) is ambiguously worded, and this article argues that this Ordinance provides compensation only for the additional costs associated with the maintenance of historical buildings and does not compensate owners for property value depreciation. However, this article also argues from an incentive perspective that adequate compensation should be provided to property owners for such depreciation to ensure that the government and the public duly account for the true costs of heritage conservation. In addition, adequate compensation eliminates the perverse incentives for owners to preemptively demolish historical buildings in order to avoid the regulatory regime. This article draws on similar legislative experiences in the UK to propose guidelines for reforming the compensation provision. ; published_or_final_version

Examines whether & how individual attitudes toward both "low-politics" & "high-politics" issues affect common political activities in the People's Republic of China in the context of post-Mao reforms. Logistic regression analyses of data derived from a 1997 representative-sample survey (N = 720 respondents) conducted in Beijing clearly indicate that, in general, both low- & high-politics subjective orientations significantly, though variably, affect the public's involvement & noninvolvement in different types of political activities. Specifically, while democratic-value believers & political-reform supporters were less likely to engage in either voting or voicing concerns, regime supporters & those who were satisfied with their personal lives were more likely to participate in voting but less likely to voice concerns. It is concluded that, given the competing arguments & evidence in the literature about the impact of various subjective orientations on participation, & the rapidly changing sociopolitical environment in China, more inclusive & comprehensive study of the roles of both high- & low-politics orientations is warranted. 3 Tables, 31 References. Adapted from the source document.