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
In 2013, after the Court of Final Appeal had finished hearing the case, Rao Geping (饒戈平) of Peking University Law School, who had earlier served as a mainland representative on the Basic Law Committee, stated that it should not be necessary for the Hong Kong government to seek another interpretation of the Basic Law either regarding Vallejos' case or the earlier "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen" (which gave Hong Kong permanent residence to Hong Kong-born children of non-Hong Kong resident mainland parents). In Rao's opinion the NPCSC had already clearly explained Article 24 of the Basic Law in its 1999 interpretation in the aftermath of "Ng Ka Ling v. Director of Immigration", and in particular had established that the Hong Kong government had the right to use the Immigration Ordinance to control who gained the right of abode in Hong Kong.