LET HONGKONGERS COME TO AMERICA.

AuthorWolfe, Liz
PositionU.S. President Joe Biden's immigration policy

IMPROVING ON DONALD Trump's immigration record won't be a tall order. While America's 45th president worked hard to scrap the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed roughly 640,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children to work and study here legally, Joe Biden says he'll push for giving them a path to citizenship.

But Biden should add a proposal with less precedent in the U.S. His administration should grant visas to Hongkongers looking to flee Chinese rule and start anew in the United States.

In 1997, China's "one country, two systems" policy extended autonomy to the island as a condition of Britain handing the territory over to China. (The arrangement was supposed to expire in 2047.) For the ensuing two decades, residents of Hong Kong enjoyed due process in courts of law, the freedom to criticize their government as much as they wanted, and the prosperity brought by thriving commerce.

But over the last few years, the mainland has attempted to take control of Hong Kong ahead of schedule. Residents responded by protesting Beijing's cruel and duplicitous actions. Hundreds of thousands (by some counts millions) of people took to the streets and occupied thoroughfares for months on end. The authorities then enacted a vague national security law that gives the government broad latitude to squash dissent.

Since then, politically outspoken...

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