Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Vallejos and Daniel Domingo appealed their cases to the Court of Final Appeal, and were respectively assigned the case numbers FACV 19 and 20/2012. They would be represented before the CFA by Michael Fordham; David Pannick continued to represent the Government. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma rejected a further application for joinder by eight-year-old Liang Wing-ki, the Hong Kong-born daughter of mainland parents, whose next friend, mother Li Yinxian, filed suit on her behalf. Philip Dykes, for the applicant, argued that because Vallejos and Domingo's case would touch on issues of interpretation of the Basic Law under Article 158, Liang's interests would also be affected. In rejecting Liang's application, Ma stated: "We feel that the points you seem to argue are adequately covered and will be adequately covered". Liang and other Hong Kong-born children like her were ruled to be entitled to the right of abode in Hong Kong in the 2001 case "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen".
Comilang v Commissioner of Registration
Comilang v. Commissioner of Registration was a 2011–2013 case against the Hong Kong Immigration Department by a former foreign domestic helper (Milagros Tecson Comilang) who is the sole custodial parent of a child (Zahrah Noor Ahmed) who has permanent residence status in Hong Kong. Comilang sought to challenge her own removal from Hong Kong on, "inter alia", the grounds that it would effectively force Ahmed to leave Hong Kong and thus deprive her of all of the benefits she should enjoy as a Hong Kong permanent resident. The ruling against the applicants in the Court of First Instance had wider legal significance, as it established that neither the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights nor the Convention on the Rights of the Child are incorporated in Hong Kong law.