S for S speaks on issue of HKSAR passports
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Reporter: Are HKSAR authorities investigating why Meng Wanzhou actually has three HKSAR passports? Is she hiding that she has three passports?
Secretary for Security: I have earlier explained in Cantonese very clearly the procedures in regard to an applicant when he or she wants to apply for replacement of (HKSAR) passport and what the procedure will be. On the approval of this application, Immigration Officers will first ask the applicant to surrender his or her passport, so that Immigration Officers would cancel that passport, and then he or she will be given the new passport together with the old, cancelled passport. If you talk about the immigration record of a particular person for a long period of time, it is very natural that the record will show that the person might have used more than one passport, because the record indicates what passport a person uses during that period of validity. So it is very natural that even you and I, if you look at the immigration record for a long time, then it will show that you have used more than one passport because at different times the validity of the passport makes you use that particular passport.
The occasion when one may be using both old and new passports will be when the old passport contains a visa which remains valid, despite the cancellation of the old passport. Then the person will have to produce both old and new passports in order to show first of all he or she has a valid travel document, and there is a valid visa attached to the old passport for the immigration officials of that particular country to check. How the officers of that country will record the documents is really up to them, because he will have to follow the procedures as laid down by his own authorities. The most important thing is, at any one time, an SAR passport holder can only hold one valid passport.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, December 10, 2018
Issued at HKT 17:49
Issued at HKT 17:49
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