Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Throughout the rest of October and November, Lam heard arguments and delivered judgments in two further FDH residence cases, namely "Irene R. Domingo and Daniel L. Domingo v. Commissioner of Registration" (HCAL 127 and 128/2010) and "Josephine B. Gutierrez and Joseph James Gutierrez v. Commissioner of Registration" (HCAL 136 and 137/2010). Among those applicants, only Daniel Domingo was found to have satisfied the "ordinary residence" requirement entitling him to apply for permanent residence; Lam found that Domingo's wife Irene's period of ordinary residence was interrupted by a period of overstay in which she remained in Hong Kong without the authority of the Director of Immigration. He separately ruled that Josephine Gutierrez had not taken positive steps to establish Hong Kong as her only place of permanent residence, meaning that she and her son Joseph James were not entitled to apply for permanent residence either.
Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Civic Party chairman Alan Leong questioned the assumption that maids could qualify for permanent residence even if Vallejos won her case, noting that the Immigration Department required applicants for permanent residence to sign a declaration that, among other things, they had "sufficient means of income to support myself and my family in Hong Kong without assistance"; he suggested that the Immigration Department would be unwilling to accept such declarations from FDHs with a typical monthly income of little more than HK$3,000. Leong went on to accuse the Liberal Party of misleading the public on the issue. An unnamed Immigration Department employee interviewed by "Sing Tao Daily", in response to Leong's comments, noted that low income was not necessarily a barrier to becoming a permanent resident, and that applications from other low-income persons such as foreign students were commonly approved.