Congress has no excuse left on Hong Kong’s spy offices |
Congress has no excuse left on Hong Kong’s spy offices
Last week a court in London delivered the first convictions under the UK National Security Act for assisting a foreign intelligence service. The defendants were Bill Yuen, a senior manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, and Peter Wai, a U.K. Border Force officer working on his orders.
Their operation involved surveilling Hong Kong dissidents on British soil, mining government immigration databases to track them, and attempting to physically remove a Hong Kong woman from her home.
The U.S. has three Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices of its own in Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco. They enjoy quasi-diplomatic privileges and immunities. Congress has spent three years introducing a bill that would require the president to certify whether those privileges are still warranted. It has never passed both chambers. In fact, it has barely moved at all.
The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office Certification Act requires the president to make an annual determination about whether these offices should continue to enjoy immunities and privileges, including protection from lawsuits and exemption from property taxes. If the president determines Hong Kong no longer merits them, the offices have 180 days to close. It is a mechanism for accountability, not confrontation.
The House passed it 413-3 in September 2024. The Senate received it, placed it on the legislative calendar, then ran out the clock. When the 118th Congress adjourned in January 2025, the bill died. It has now been reintroduced in........