Hong Kong has always been an expatriate playground. Yet, the most significant change in Hong Kong brought on by expats may not come from wealthy merchants or missionaries. Rather it is the recent wave of foreign workers at all levels who effect every corner of Hong Kong life and it's economy that may well hold the keys to Hong Kong's future. In the past year I have been in restaurants, hotels, and small shops where the majority of employees are not Hong Kong people. Just the other night at a small restaurant in Kennedy town there was not one Hong Kong person on staff, and then when we walked down the block for a drink, again, the staff was also entirely foreign. For a recent IT job not one resume advanced was that of a local.

As an expat of nearly 28 years it is not a development that in anyway worries me. On the contrary as a fan of democracy and open societies it is something that gives me great hope for Hong Kong's future.

We have always been an international city with a free flow of people, trade, and open information that is the envy of all Asia. Combine this with a strong rule of law and we have all the ingredients for Hong Kong's not so secret sauce that drives economic growth and the continued prosperity of our city. Yet the one variable on our economic prosperity ingredient list is the availability of labor. In all my years in Hong Kong I cannot think of a time when the labor market, at all levels, has been tighter. We are short everything from cooks to computer scientists. At the very least we have 3 jobs for every active job seeker. We are not alone in Asia in our worker shortages.

China may not be enjoying the double digit economic growth that sucked multiple generations into economic stability, but its 5 to 6% growth does more than enough in terms of keeping employment readily available for the masses as well as a quickly growing educated class. In other words there just won't be enough talent from the mainland to meet our labor needs.

With our low birth rate and what has been termed the "silver tsunami" that is our rapidly aging workforce we need more immigrants. Hong Kong requires tens of thousands of new workers from abroad to fill the tens thousands of jobs that are being vacated by a rapidly retiring workforce. As a people we haven't been busy enough in the bedroom turning out new babies for the last 25 years to make up for a population that is aging on par with Japan and Taiwan.

Economics alone would be enough to justify the government being even more aggressive in soliciting talented workers to grow our economy. But we as a civil society may find in these foreign workers an even greater utility. Something the government may not find appealing.

Foreign workers, by and large, arrive in our city from democratic nations, and with them they bring expectations of freedom and human rights that serve as a barrier for the CCP in terms of clamping down on society. By no means do I expect expatriates or Filipino bar workers to lead the charge for democracy in Hong Kong. They are here to make money and are quite good at keeping their heads down when it comes to staying out of domestic politics. Yet we shouldn't for a second think that they will remain should the city become like China in terms of lack of information flow, the treatment of individuals by the government, and any degradation of rule of law.

The tech workers we import from India and Southeast Asia have other options, as do bankers, and even service industry workers. A city under harsh rule is not a city they will remain in long.

Any study of Singapore shows the benefit of foreign workers as the openness that foreigners demand also entitles Singaporeans to liberties that it's doubtful Singapore's authoritarian government would grant otherwise. Even China, with its recent proposal to allow open internet access at an island resort, Hainan, in order to appease foreign visitors, is evidence that the more foreigners arrive the greater governments have to relax controls in order to keep them coming.

Hong Kong has always been an international city. We make money on the people and goods that flow through our city. Yet via demographics we may have found a new benefit of our strong and varied expatriate community. Foreign workers may not just bring with them skills for the economy, they may bring some of the key ingredients for the continuation of a free and open society.