Although China did not agree to a blanket grant of citizenship to South Asians settled in Hong Kong, it empowered the Hong Kong Immigration Department to naturalise Hong Kong residents as Chinese citizens. Prior to 2002, the Hong Kong Immigration Department discouraged South Asians and other ethnic minorities from taking this course, with immigration officers reportedly refusing to even give them the forms to fill in (thus they would not show up in rejection statistics). It took until December 2002 to see the first case of successful naturalisation application by an ethnic minority resident with no Chinese relatives, an Indian girl, followed by a Pakistani man.