Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
On 30 September 2011, Justice Johnson Lam of the Court of First Instance of the High Court (CFI) ruled in Vallejos' case that existing legislation restricting FDHs from qualifying for permanent residence contravened the Hong Kong Basic Law. Lam also found that Vallejos and Domingo, but not the three other applicants, had fulfilled the condition of taking Hong Kong as their only permanent home and being ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for seven years. The Court of Appeal of the High Court overturned the CFI's decision on Vallejos' case on 28 March 2012. Vallejos and Domingo then jointly appealed to the Court of Final Appeal (CFA), which heard their case on 26–28 February 2013; the CFA rejected their appeal on 25 March 2013.
Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
In October 2011, the government filed an appeal from Lam's CFI judgment in the Court of Appeal, and was assigned the case number CACV 204/2011. The government's submission stated that Lam erred in finding that foreign domestic helpers' residence in Hong Kong could not be regarded as "out of the ordinary", in finding that the government's right to apply immigration control under Basic Law Article 154 could not be applied to Vallejos, and in failing to consider extrinsic materials from both prior to and subsequent to the publication of the Basic Law in 1990. High Court Chief Judge Andrew Cheung and High Court vice-presidents Robert Tang and Frank Stock heard the government's appeal on 21–23 February 2012. David Pannick continued to represent the government. In the first day of the hearing, Pannick argued that "there is no undermining of the rule of law if the legislature enjoys a certain margin of discretion". Pannick also pointed to the previous British administration's treatment of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong in the 1980s as a precedent. He further brought up examples from UK law, such as the fact that time spent there on a student visa was not regarded as "ordinary residence" and did not count towards the time required to obtain indefinite leave to remain.