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".
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.