Same sex partners struggle with Hong Kong immigration applications for the simple, yet wholly unsatisfactory, reason that true equality has not yet arrived in the HKSAR.
I have compiled these 10 resources to help you apply for a gay partner visa for Hong Kong.
If you need specific answers, as always, please feel free to Ask Me A Question and I’ll PodCast you an answer, completely free of charge, within 48 hours.
The approvability test for a Hong Kong investment visa is that you have to show you are in a position to make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong.
If you can do this through the calibre of your business plan and the manifest strength of your investment visa application then you can readily expect an approval from the Immigration Department for you to establish or join in your business in the HKSAR.
So the question is begged as to the reasons why investment visa applications get denied?
Typically, such cases are refused where:
1 – The business is not especially well funded or other resources which the HKID would expect to see are not in place at the time of approval or are manifestly lacking from the application itself.
2 – There is no obvious ‘investment’ to take place. Namely, the business is going to be run on a shoe string with growth occurring principally from revenues yet to be earned.
3 – The ‘substantiality’ aspect of the approvability test will not be satisfied as the business is effectively a one-man show and is likely to remain so due to the nature of the enterprise and the story which the supporting documentation reveals.
4 – There is nothing especially interesting about the business itself such that the HKID can’t get excited about, for example,new or improved technology, paradigm shifting value add or the personal skills of the applicant which would essentially be imparted to the local workforce if the investment visa was approved.
5 – Conversely, the proposed activity of the business is not deemed desirable, even if legal.
Finally, a significant reason for investment visa refusal is down to the fact that the applicant finds himself nursing a poor prior immigration record which negatively colours his all-important application this time around.
Our client was UK national who had, prior to deciding to study in Hong Kong, redomiciled his relatively new, yet manifestly profitable business, here from the south of England.
Britain’s loss, Hong Kong’s gain.
His business partner, also a UK citizen, had independently applied for an investment visa some months earlier and had been approved to come and run their business in Hong Kong.
Whilst still small, the company was obviously going places.
Our client, on the other hand, was more interested in furthering his engineering studies in Hong Kong and initially had no desire nor intention to participate in the affairs of the business.
Consequently he enrolled in a Masters Degree programme on a full time basis in a Hong Kong university and was granted a student visa.
This client initially approached us for advice in respect of the lawfulness of him receiving dividends from the business whilst he was in possession of a student visa.
At the time we advised him that, so long as he was not engaged in the management, direction or administration or the affairs of the company, the Immigration Department would perceive the money received as investment income and not an emolument resulting from the holding of any office nor undertaking any work in his business.
Several months later the client contacted us once more.
Whilst he was a full time student, it had transpired that the material he was learning about in his post graduate programme, was directly relevant to his business and, conversely, the activities of his company were now directly relevant to what he was preparing for his thesis.
So he wanted to join in his business in an active way and adjust his study mode from full time to part time.
This required an application to the Immigration Department for him to adjust his status from student visa to an investment visa with special dispensation for him to convert his Master Degree studies from full time to part time.
After about 12 weeks the process of satisfying the approvability test in respect of the investment visa element of the application was effectively complete.
Now it came down to the approval of the university for a change in study mode from full time to part time.
The first run at documenting this change of study mode, resulted in a letter from the engineering faculty, not from the university registrar, and was crafted to appear conditional on the HKID approving this new scheme of arrangement.
For their part, the HKID would not accept this faculty level communication as it was merely conditional and it needed to be definitive.
Our client then went back to the Registrar who communicated with the Head of Faculty who agreed that the change of study mode was acceptable and therefore the Registrar issued the requisite letter.
Consequently, our client’s case was finalized positively and he was granted his investment visa with the requisite dispensation to study.
Here’s the twist.
Had our client been able to read the tea leaves he would never have applied to study for his Masters Degree full time.
He would have, instead, secured an investment visa from the get go and applied to undertake his studies on a part time basis AFTER his investment visa was approved as, under current immigration policy, a student visa is needed only for a full time course of study.
If you are holding a Hong Kong employment visa or an investment visa you are lawfully able to take up a part time course of study without any specific permission from the HKID to do so.
So going from Student visa to Investment visa turned into a complete palaver as the university knew full well that any part time course of study would not require their participation in an immigration scenario.
As our client was a full time student under their immigration charge, the university became an integral facet of the application which went on to add several weeks and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with the HKID to get the visa approval over the line.
Complex yes, but credit to the Department, the right immigration outcome was achieved in the end.
Getting a visa to live in Hong Kong can be a complicated process. Understanding what it takes to get your application approved is not easy to fathom as the Hong Kong Immigration Department website is informative but not especially useful.
I have known Mark Daly (and his partner Peter Barnes, no relation) since their time with (sadly departed) Pam Baker in the 1990’s. I have the utmost respect for Mark and Peter and in fact these are the only 2 lawyers in Hong Kong that I refer clients of the Hong Kong Visa Centre to when recourse to the courts is needed to achieve the right immigration outcome.
Mark is responsible for the recent legal challenge to the preclusion of Foreign Domestic Helpers from access to permanent residency in Hong Kong, litigation which at the time of writing is presently ongoing.
In this video recorded at the FCC in February of this year, Mark discusses strategic human rights litigation, refugee and convention against torture law, and the limits of Hong Kong’s judicial review process.
– Spend seven years continuously resident in the HKSAR
– Have taken Hong Kong as your only place of permanent residence
– Be obviously settled here, and
– Have no outstanding taxation liabilities
Moreover, you need to have held a resident visa in all of that time, except for short periods when your immigration status was in a state of administrative flux.
This means that you can start counting the 7 years from when your first residence visa was issued through to the 7th year anniversary.
In that time, any short periods where you unexpectedly had to have a visitor visa (say, if you were changing employers at the time your employment visa expired, or you had to leave Hong Kong temporarily and your visa expired while you were away) will not count against your ‘continuity of residence’ for the purposes of your permanent residency application.
But it is absolutely vital that you have a valid residence visa at the time you file your application for the Right of Abode AND at the time of its approval – otherwise you simply will not qualify.
Phil also wanted to know if the Hong Kong employment visa process system under the General Employment Policy administered by the HKID is essentially fair or not.
You can hear how it all panned out by clicking here.
I will be visiting Phil next sometime in October, date to be arranged.
In the meantime, why not check out Morning Brew on Facebook and also listen live to Phil’s show via the web here.
