Is The Travel Pass As Good As A Hong Kong Employment Visa?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Hadley Says…, Visitor Visas / 10 responses

The Travel Pass is designed for frequent visitors to Hong Kong who have a current, pre-existing employment outside of the HKSAR that is going to continue in the future.

Moreover, the Travel Pass requires that your frequent visits here will be of benefit to Hong Kong.

You also need the support of a local contact who can vouch for your bona fides.

Essentially, then, if you can satisfy these three key elements it is reasonable to expect approval.

Of course, in order to get out of the starting gate, you need to have made three trips to Hong Kong in the 12 months immediately prior to submission of your Travel Pass application and you have to be a citizen of a country that is provided with visa-upon-arrival privileges.

It takes 4-6 weeks to finalise a Travel Pass application and, if successful, your prize is quick and easy clearance through immigration each time you arrive, a 2 month limit of stay granted ‘no questions asked’ and get three years of trouble-free to-ing and fro-ing between Hong Kong and your current country of residence (or any third country for that matter).

But it is NOT a visa to live in Hong Kong and so you cannot transfer your employment here on the strength of  your Travel Pass, cannot get a Hong Kong ID Card, cannot sponsor your family for dependant visas nor employ a foreign domestic helper.

So, for those of you who are looking for pseudo-residence permissions in Hong Kong it’s close, but no cigar!

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What’s The Deal About Advertising Your Job Locally Before You Can Apply For An Employment Visa In Hong Kong?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Hadley Says… / 5 responses

The question is often asked if it is absolutely necessary to undertake a local advertising campaign in respect of a job to be offered to a foreign national who needs an employment visa to take up a job in Hong Kong.

The answer is, it all depends.

In the case of intercompany transferees, certainly not.

The Hong Kong Immigration Department will typically not second guess the need to try to recruit locally in this situation.

However, in many other cases the spectre of ‘local recruitment first’ looms large.

The general rule of thumb is that the lower the skill set required to do the job, the more likely the Hong Kong Immigration Department will expect a local recruitment exercise to have been completed prior to the foreign national applicant being offered the position.

The same holds true for work that is remunerated at the lower end of the approvability scale (being about HKD200,000 per annum).

For those employers trying to pre-empt this challenge, you need to be aware that undertaking a local recruitment exercise that can be said to be mere window dressing is a 2 pronged barb.

On the one hand, the mere fact you undertake a local recruitment exercise first is tacit admission that the job CAN be done by a local person and the HKID will latch on to this and possibly use it to undermine your argument  for visa approvability.

In this instance they will ask you to submit copies of the CVs received in response to the campaign and then decide for themselves if any of the candidates are suitable – and then refuse the employment visa application on the grounds that the skills CAN be found locally.

So care needs to be taken in considering the ‘local employee first’ aspect of securing an employment visa in Hong Kong.

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How Will Your Employment Visa Application Be Impacted If The Hong Kong Company Employing You Is New?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Hadley Says…, Investment Visas / 3 responses

Where your proposed employer is a brand new company you can expect the Hong Kong Immigration Department to look very closely at the enterprise to make sure that it is in fact a suitable sponsor for your working visa permissions.

In many ways, the due diligence which the Hong Kong ID undertake is very much like that which they do for an investment visa application.

Essentially, then, they will examine your new employer’s bona fides to ensure that the business is positioned to make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong.

This will involve a requirement for dedicated business premises, the potential for, if not the actuality of, locally hired staff, good capitalization and the expectation of solid commercial activities in play which have led to the need to employ you, a foreign national, in the first place.

In fact, where a new sponsoring company comes forward seeking to employ a foreign national employee, and that business is less than 2 years old, you can expect a searching assessment of that entity for suitability as an employment visa sponsor.

And it is through this mechanism that the Hong Kong ID filter out contrived employment visa applications promoted by foreign nationals who are simply seeking to remain in the HKSAR, whatever the means.

So, not only must the job offer in question be a genuine one, it has to be extended from a credible employer all things considered.

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Shenzhen Residents Get Unlimited 7 Day Visits To Hong Kong

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Feature Article, Musing, VG Front Page / No responses

Shenzhen Residents Now Eligible for Unlimited 7-Day Visits to Hong Kong

The Visa Geeza Discusses On RTHK Radio 3 Today

 

Shenzhen Residents Get Unlimited 7-Day Visits to Hong Kong Starting December 2024

From 1 December 2024, Shenzhen residents will enjoy greater travel flexibility to Hong Kong with the reinstatement of the multiple-entry Individual Visit Scheme (IVS). Permanent residents of Shenzhen, as well as residence permit holders, can apply for this new IVS, allowing unlimited entries to Hong Kong over the course of a year. Each visit permits a stay of up to 7 days, providing convenient access for business, tourism, and leisure.

Shenzhen Residents Get Unlimited 7 Day Visits To Hong Kong – How?

The Exit and Entry Administration of Mainland China announced this enhancement, approved by the State Council. The expanded eligibility marks a significant change, particularly for non-permanent residents with residence permits in Shenzhen. This initiative replaces the current “one trip per week” endorsement, which will no longer be issued after 1 December 2024. Existing endorsements remain valid until their expiration date.

This development has been warmly welcomed by the Hong Kong SAR Government. Kevin Yeung, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Culture, Sports, and Tourism, highlighted that the unlimited 7-day visits by Shenzhen residents will drive growth in Hong Kong’s tourism, retail, and catering industries, further strengthening its economy.

Shenzhen Residents Get Unlimited 7 Day Visits To Hong Kong – Macau Qualifies too!

In parallel, starting 1 January 2025, Zhuhai residents will be able to apply for “one trip per week” travel permits to another neighboring SAR. Additionally, eligible residents of the Guangdong-Hengqin Cooperation Zone can apply for multiple-entry permits, allowing unlimited visits with a maximum 7-day stay per trip.

These updates make travel between Shenzhen and Hong Kong more seamless than ever, fostering closer ties and new opportunities for residents and businesses in the region.

The resumption of the multiple-entry Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) for Shenzhen residents represents a significant shift in travel policies between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, marking a return to more flexible arrangements discontinued in 2015. Initially introduced in 2009, the scheme allowed Shenzhen permanent residents to visit Hong Kong multiple times within a year. However, it was replaced by the “one trip per week” restriction in 2015 due to concerns about parallel trading and local capacity constraints, as well as public unrest regarding overcrowding in popular districts like Sheung Shui and Tsim Sha Tsui.

Shenzhen Residents Get Unlimited 7 Day Visits To Hong Kong – One Trip Per Week Gone!

The “one trip per week” policy aimed to curb the influx of visitors involved in parallel trading, which strained public resources and created tensions between visitors and locals. This measure led to a decline in same-day visitor numbers and impacted local retail and tourism sectors that had relied on higher visitor volumes. Despite these challenges, the policy persisted as part of efforts to balance economic benefits with social harmony.

With the multiple-entry scheme set to resume, this updated policy reflects both a revival of economic ties and a strategic move to boost Hong Kong’s tourism and retail industries post-pandemic.

It also demonstrates a concerted effort by both the Hong Kong SAR and central authorities to adapt border management policies to current economic and social conditions.

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Sometimes Large Employers Experience Hong Kong Employment Visa Refusals Too – Why Might This Be So?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Hadley Says…, Refusals & Appeals / 8 responses

Most sizeable employers in Hong Kong have in house expertise when it comes to applying for employment visas for their foreign national staff.

And, unless they specifically outsource their immigration service needs to professional advisors, they are typically very comfortable in making and managing work visa applications when the need arises.

But sometimes, these applications can come a cropper!

You see, there are three types of employment visa cases which the Hong Kong Immigration Department see each and every working day.

These are cases which just the need the basic of administration, which otherwise require a lot of argument, or are a hybrid of the 2.

In 99% percent of all cases with a large employer sponsoring the application, the case tends to be just administrative in nature, meaning the forms must be filled in properly, the simple set of  supporting documentation presented in good order and the applicant is obviously  a ‘professional’ for the purposes of the General Employment Policy under Hong Kong immigration law.

The problem lies in the 1% of cases which are not just administrative but actually fall elsewhere on the argumentation-administration axis.

So, when employment visa applications sponsored by large employers get refused, it is always down to this reality: the internal human resources executive tasked with getting the visa has not understood the need to argue for an approval and has assumed that it is mostly just a matter of filling in the forms, just like always.

Hong Kong Immigration… What Does It Mean… One Year Rule?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Family Visas, Investment Visas, Musing, Special Programmes / 2 responses

Over the last 20 years or so I have coined a number of phrases in Hong Kong immigration parlance.

In this short video, I discuss the One Year Rule as it applies to PRC nationals applicants  for resident visa status in Hong Kong.

The one-year rule is where a PRC national who wants to come to Hong Kong to take up residency as a dependent or as an investor or as an employment leader applicant if they have lived outside of China for a minimum of one year immediately prior to submitting their application they will be able to be treated by the Immigration Department as though they were not Chinese they were another nationality and this stems from the fact that we have something called the floodgates policy which for all practical purposes makes it very very difficult and very very demanding for mainlanders to get access to Hong Kong through through our normal immigration policy arrangements but if you’ve spent 12 months continuously outside of China before you make your application for an immigration status in Hong Kong then under the one-year rule you’ll be treated just like any other foreign national and you’re not in a sense be subject to the normal floodgates mechanisms which make it very difficult for such PRC nationals to come and take a residence in Hong Kong.

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What’s The Minimum Salary For A Hong Kong Employment Visa Approval?

Posted by The Visa Geeza / in Employment Visas, Musing / 2 responses

Understanding the Minimum Salary Requirements for a Hong Kong Employment Visa

This is a vexed question for many visa applicants and their employers but there is a simple rule of thumb that needs to be adhered to.

The Hong Kong Immigration Department expect that a foreigner seeking employment visa permissions to work in Hong Kong will perform, at a minimum, supervisory duties under his or her employment contract.

This essentially calls for an employment that is valued, as a minimum, at HKD200,000 p.a., depending on the nature of the work.

However, it is simplistic to believe that you take HKD200,000 and divide it by 12 in order to achieve a monthly salary amount that is acceptable to the HKID (namely HKD16,670 per month).

No, the HKD200,000 annually can amount to the total value of the employment each year.

Therefore it is acceptable to state in the employment agreement the total value of the emolument received by the employee each year and then break it down into its constituent components.

For example:

Salary:                                             XXXXX

Employer MPF Contribution:            XXXXX

Guaranteed Bonus                          XXXXX

Medical Benefits:                             XXXXX

Travel Allowance:                            XXXXX

Meal Allowance:                              XXXXX

Etc:

Total:                                              200,000

This approach provides you with flexibility where the monthly cash salary is on the lower end of the scale but where the true cost of the employment does reach the threshold for visa approval.

Whilst HKD200,000 is not definitive in each and every case (we’ve seen approvals down at HKD186,000 in actual fact) it is certainly fair to say that the higher the value of the employment, the more likely the Immigration Department will look more favourably on the application.

However, it is always preferable to avoid bumping against the bottom of this HKD200,000 sum as you’re not doing your application any favours by trying to eke out the bare minimum that you can pay your foreign national staff, expecting  the Immigration Department to play ball!

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