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
The first applicant in the CFA case, Evangeline Banao Vallejos, is a native of the Philippines, where she was previously a businesswoman. She came to Hong Kong in 1986 as an FDH, while the territory was still a British colony. During her first year in Hong Kong, she switched employers, but afterwards continued to work for the family of Barry Ong for more than two decades. She performed volunteer work and became active in a church. She approached the Immigration Department for verification of eligibility for permanent residence in April 2008. In November that year, the Immigration Department informed her that her application was not successful; she was not considered to be "ordinarily resident" in Hong Kong by reason of Immigration Ordinance Article 2(4)(a)(vi). The following month, she approached the Registration of Persons Office to apply for a Hong Kong Permanent Identity Card, for which she was also rejected. She appealed to the Registration of Persons Tribunal, which in June 2009 ruled against her. At that point, Vallejos applied to the Legal Aid Department for help; local law firm Barnes and Daly, as well as barrister Gladys Li, agreed to assist Vallejos in applying for judicial review to rule on whether the relevant provision of the Immigration Ordinance complied with the Basic Law. The case came to mainstream media attention in December 2010.