The Hong Kong Immigration Department expect that, as part of any application for an investment visa, the entrepreneur will naturally establish a home for his or her business out of which the enterprise will operate.
Whilst it often makes financial sense for a brand new start up enterprise to initially work from the spare bedroom or kitchen at home, this arrangement, unfortunately, will not pass muster with Wanchai’s Finest down in Immigration Tower.
Where, for example, are the new employees going to report to work each day? Not from your home address, that’s for sure, not so long as the Immigration Department have a say in your plans, it won’t.
Instead, investment visas which get approved these days either:
– Open their own offices right from the very get go, or
– Establish a virtual office initially, and then grow into fully serviced offices subsequently, or
– Take a formal agreement to share another party’s office, often with an aligned business or commercial partner
If you take the latter route, however, it is important that the other party has a formal stamped tenancy agreement to prove that the arrangements are genuine.
Oh, and it helps to submit photographs of your office premises as part of your application bundle.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
The Hong Kong Immigration Department website is good for a few things but not very good at all where it counts – namely, indicting to you your chances of success in getting your Hong Kong residence visa application approved.
You see, immigration policy in Hong Kong is governed by highly confidential guidelines which the general public or, indeed, even professional practitioners do not have access to.
And these guiding principles are dynamic and shift to suit the contingencies and needs inherent in Hong Kong’s economic circumstances at any moment in time.
So, it’s a moving feast and, unless you are dealing with immigration applications day-in, day-out, it is almost impossible to glean what the current approach the HKID are taking to in approving certain applications such as those for employment and investment visas.
In this regard, the Immigration Department website is designed to do just 3 things:
1 Firstly, it sets out the policy mantra (what I have couched the approvability tests) for each type of visa application describing the consideration criteria.
2 Secondly, it provides a general list of documents that need to be prepared to pursue your application – but doesn’t explain what they are looking for on these documents and in this respect they are inviting you, as it were, to lift up your skirt and show them everything.
3 Finally, it tells you how to go about initiating your application and sets up your expectations of, potentially, a 4 week case consideration time line to outcome notification.
The HKID website is informative but not especially useful as the the role of the Immigration Department is one of poacher and gamekeeper: their job is to inform and decide, not to advise.
Consequently, the Immigration Department website should not be taken as the definitive guide to application approvability.
The hundreds of people each month who search for ‘case refusal’ ‘application denied’ and ‘visa appeal’ on our Visa Handbookand the Visa Geezawebsites is testimony to this fact.
The HKID website only tells you 2/3rds of the story!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
It’s a common enough problem, where unmarried couples are coming to Hong Kong, one to work, one trailing in the other’s wake. I have covered variations on this scenario previously, but this question is excellent as it gets to the heart of how to manage the inevitable visitor status of the non employed partner through ’til such a time as both parties are able to gain employment visa status.
QUESTION
“I viewed your Hong Kong visa presentation & I was wondering if you could help me with a query?
My partner is travelling over to Hong Kong to work for an airline. As we are not married I will not be a dependent person.
I was told that I would receive a tourist visa for 3 months which could be lengthened by travelling outside HK & re-entering.
I hope to find employment in HK & remain on, on a work visa.
Please advise on:
(1) Should I mention my intention of seeking employment when entering HK or on a visa application?
(2) Your opinion on whether extending the visa based on the desire to find work in HK is possible?”
ANSWER
This is a really interesting question because ostensibly the visa upon arrival privileges that are afforded to more than 180 different nationalities are such that you have to present yourself as a bona fide visitor in order to qualify for admission under these arrangements, and it then begs the question as to what is permitted activity under the visitor visa category.
A practical experience suggests that coming to Hong Kong to look for work is perfectly lawful. Although, if you are to indicate that this is your intention when you’re at the border, the officer may misconstrue what your real motivations are, and may conclude that actually whilst you think that you’re just looking for work he may conclude that you’re going to be engaging in work.
So you increase your risk profile as a bona visitor when you present yourself if you nominate to the examining officer what’s bringing you to Hong Kong at this point in time. So ostensibly, if you’re going to be entering or exiting Hong Kong to spend time with your partner who does have an employment visa, then you just explain that is the purpose of your visit. And I would stay silent as to your intentions to look for and ultimately secure work in Hong Kong and then adjust your status to get an employment visa.
Now, in terms of whether it’s possible to extend your visa based on the desired working in Hong Kong, I’ll just refer you to what I mentioned earlier. If you’re coming as a visitor, don’t expect the Immigration Department to support your desire to extend your stay as a visitor because you’re pursuing the local job market in anticipation of finding a position subsequently that would lead you to make an employment visa application. So keep the two very discreet and very separate.
Having said all that, primarily the vast majority of cases that we do for employment or indeed investment visas are done on what is effectively a change of status application basis where you find yourself in Hong Kong as a visitor and a job often manifests itself, and you then make an application to adjust your status from visitor to employment. And once that process has played itself out, you’ll be granted an employment visa label that you would then have to make an exit from Hong Kong – Macau, Shenzhen, Zhuhai are all fine, relinquishing your visitor visa status as you make the exit.
Then place the employment visa label on a clean page in your passport and turn right around and come straight back into Hong Kong, entering with your visitor visa, and the immigration officer will activate you at the point of entering Hong Kong.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Securing an approval for an investment visa is one of the hardest challenges there is in the realm of Hong Kong immigration practice.
Your mission is to pass the approvability test and demonstrate definitively to the Hong Kong Immigration Department that you can make a substantial contribution to the economy of Hong Kong as a whole.
First and foremost, you need a really good business investment story and the wherewithal to tell it in a compelling way.
A good way to think about how to go about doing this is to make believe that you are trying to persuade a rich, self-made uncle to back your business plan for Hong Kong financially.
If, after you have revealed all of your plans to him, do you believe he would see fit to put his hard earned money up to help you get your business in the HKSAR off the ground?
You might think of this as the smell test for how the Immigration Department will receive your story and so, if it won’t get past your uncle, why do you think it will pass muster with the HKID?
Assuming your story is compelling, you then have to ask yourself if you are going to put in place the three legs of what I have couched as the approvability stool for an investment visa approval.
Namely, are you going to be creating local employment opportunities in the not too distant future?
Are you planning to take on suitable business premises to accommodate your operations right from the get go and have you got real cash to put into the business as, by definition, this visa type calls for an act of investment?
Whether the cash you have available for investment is modest or significant, the HKID will also be expecting to see an array of additional resources which you plan to bring into play in your proposed business for Hong Kong.
This can take in partnerships, confirmed business in hand, exclusive contracts with obviously successful enterprises, bank guarantees, the support of local businesses or commercial personalities, a track record of personal and business success – indeed any other resources which are manifestly going to assist you set the business off on the path to eventual success.
And there are 2 other elements which are found in each and every business investment visa approval which we have been responsible for over the last 20 years.
These are an undying commitment to your enterprise, giving everything that you have to it and also a manifestly entrepreneurial spirit.
Hong Kong has this in droves and is the baseline against which all investment visa applications are considered by the HKID.
If you are less than enthusiastic about the possibility for success in your new business, no matter how well resourced it may be, this will undoubtedly come across in the way you articulate your story and manage your application, so think big, talk big and back up your representations with good paperwork and administer your application in a very timely manner.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
The Travel Passis 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 takes4-6 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!
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
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.
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.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
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 visaapplication.
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.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
