Life can get a bit complicated if you work in 2 places at the same time…
QUESTION
I work for a Hong Kong company in Macau and my wife is my dependent in Hong Kong where we live.
My colleague was the same but has now been employed by a Macau company.
Does this change his wife’s dependency status in Hong Kong?
And should she become a dependent in Macau?
He is, as myself, a Hong Kong resident.
Thanks!
ANSWER
The real crux of the issue here is if your friend is going to secure an employment visa in Macau and is going to be physically resident in Macau. And clearly, in that case, he wants his spouse also to be resident with him in Macau. If during this exercise, the employment arrangements in Hong Kong for your friend terminate, and at the time that his next employment visa extension for Hong Kong, when that comes due, he doesn’t have a Hong Kong employment, then he will not be able to secure an extension to his employment visa in Hong Kong, even if he has an employment visa in Macau.
And consequently, his wife, who has a dependent visa sponsored by him on the basis of his employment in Hong Kong, will not be able to get an extension to her dependent visa. So that will effectively leave her in a kind of immigration limbo between Hong Kong and Macau without any specific residency permissions, unless she goes ahead and makes an application to get a dependent visa on the strength of her husband’s employment in Macau, that’s a Macau dependent visa, not Hong Kong dependent visa.
So in reality, if they’re going to be living in Macau, then she needs a dependent visa to support her husband there, which will be granted on the strength of the fact that he’s got an employment visa in Macau; if he doesn’t have an employment visa in Hong Kong, as I say, she won’t be able to get a dependent visa for Hong Kong any longer because the conditions that are in play for successful application won’t exist.
Therefore, she’ll need to get a dependent visa for Macau. You can’t live in Hong Kong and have a dependent visa in Macau, and you can’t live in Macau and have a dependent visa in Hong Kong are two separate jurisdictions. It isn’t immediately clear, however, from your question, when you say that he’s a resident of Hong Kong, whether he’s a permanent resident or he’s in fact an employment visa holding temporary residence, the initial advice that I’ve given you is on the assumption that he’s a temporary employment visa holding resident.
If, on the other hand, he is a permanent resident, then he will be able to sponsor a dependent visa for his wife, notwithstanding the fact that he continues to work in Macau or will be working in Macau for the foreseeable future. So that kind of takes care of all of the issues in relation to dependent visa states and the circumstances and facts, if you essayed them.
One important thing to remember in all of this, however, is for any applicant that is planning to go on to secure a permanent residency in Hong Kong with the strength of having been continuously nor resident in Hong Kong for a period of not less than seven years, needs to appreciate that both Hong Kong and Macau are separate immigration jurisdictions.
And if you are living in Macau while still holding a residence visa in Hong Kong, and the amount of time that you are spending in Macau overshadows the time that you spend in Hong Kong and you are unable to show to the Immigration Department that you have been settled in Hong Kong throughout all of this time, even though you’ve been holding a residence visa for Hong Kong, but you’ve been physically living in Macau, time spent in Macau, unless you’re very careful about how you construct your affairs, may serve to break your continuity of ordinary residence for a Right of Abode application subsequently.
So, as I said in the title to this post, life can get a little bit complex where you’re effectively living in one place, but potentially working in two countries, or if you are indeed working in Hong Kong presently, and in the thrills of relocating to work in Macau, it can get a bit messy, a bit complicated.
But that notwithstanding, I hope you found this useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Does time spent ‘between’ residence impact on your eligibility for the Right of Abode in Hong Kong after 7 years ?
QUESTION
I am a Canadian citizen living and working in Hong Kong for the last 4 years.
My employment has ended and I have not yet been able to obtain a new offer of employment in order to arrange for a change of sponsorship.
Since my authorization for stay expires on 4 January 2015, I anticipate I will need to exit and re-enter as a visitor in order to continue looking for employment.
With a mind towards eventually hopefully applying for PR status, am considering the possibility of registering for language lessons in a suitable program and applying for a student visa.
The provider has verified they can sponsor a student visa for a certain length of course.
I am still under my current apartment contract in Hong Kong.
My question is, if I can file the student visa application on or before the expiration date of the work visa, will that be sufficient to support a claim later to claim the time as ‘ordinarily resident‘ in Hong Kong until I can find other suitable employment?
What if the student visa application is filed within 2-3 weeks after the expiration of the employment visa?
Finally, will transitioning from employment, to student, back to employment visa be a liability in an eventual PR application, or will ImmD only look at the fact that the time in HKSAR has been covered by residence visas with only minor ‘visitor’ breaks in the middle while the paper work is being processed by Immigration Tower?
So, all things considered, does time spent ‘between’ residence visas like this impact on eligibility for the right of abode in Hong Kong allowing me to qualify for PR after all?
Thank you.
ANSWER
Yes, you’d be surprised that this question presents itself in many guises quite often, and the answer is actually quite favourable for you given your circumstances. The Immigration Departments are looking for settlement from an applicant for the Right of Abode after seven years, because the test for approval is continuous ordinary residencefor a period of not less than seven years, where any absences from Hong Kong in that time have been of a merely temporary nature; and if you find yourself not having a residence visa, qualifying under the concept of ordinary residence for a state of what I’ve called administrative flux, where you essentially are spending time on a visitor visa rather than a formal residence visa, due to you essentially moving from one visa category to another as you organise the permissions of the Director to allow you to undertake new residence type activity here, that time spent during a state of administrative flux doesn’t break your notion of settlement as long as you’re physically in Hong Kong during that time, and from an immigration perspective, earnestly trying to bring about the circumstances that will allow you to continue to reside in Hong Kong.
So in your instance, if your employment visais about to expire and you decide that you’re going to become a student, then as you transition from your employment visa to your student visa, holding a visitor visa in the interim, then the Immigration Department will not allow that to break your continuity of ordinary residence.
And similarly, when you finish being a student and go back to employment, as long as you’re physically in Hong Kong and you’re not abandoning your settlement, and you’re earnestly trying to bring about the circumstances that allow you to argue that you’ve been settled in Hong Kong, that the time spent on visitor status, as I say, moved from one status to another, resident status to another, doesn’t break your continuity as long as you’re clearly settled throughout all of that time.
So essentially you don’t really have any problems, I would say as long as you are not on visitor status, if that’s what you need to hold. While the circumstances present themselves for you to get your student visa or subsequently your employment visa, you’ll find that your continuity of ordinary residence at the seven year mark will not be broken.
So, the amount of time that you cite in your question, two to three weeks after your employment visa ends, before you get your student visa issued, that’s certainly not going to break your continuity of ordinary residence. In my experience, it’s usually no more than three or four months visit or status that presents itself as a problem.
So, if you find yourself with a visitor visa that is going to be sort of three knocking on four months old, I would be a bit circumspect about trying to get yourself a residence visa as soon as you possibly can. But otherwise, in the circumstances as you’ve described them in your question, I don’t believe you’re going to be breaking your, continuity.
And I hope that it all comes good for you in a good timeframe, so that you don’t have to worry about it too much later down the track when you make your application for the Right of Abode at seven years.
Okay. I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
So, if you plan to leave your job a few weeks before your 7 year anniversary how will this impact on your application for the Right of Abode in Hong Kong?
QUESTION
I‘m Australian, and have an employment visa in Hong Kong currently, but I wish to resign from my present job.
Having said that, I might not be able to apply for a new employment here so soon, but I wish to get right of abode in HK.
My 7th year anniversary is in July 2015.
However, if I resign now, my employment will cease in April; my resident visa ends 2016 Jul.
A few queries:
Will my employment visa expire when my employment ends and will I still be able to stay in HK after April?
If I stay in HK unemployed till July, can I still apply my right of abode then?
If I leave HK in April, and return to HK in July, can I still apply for the right of abode in Hong Kong then?
Many thanks!
ANSWER
This question seems to raise its head very frequently, and I’m pleased to be able to address it one more time in the context of these circumstances. So, just to recap, when you get an employment visa, you get two privileges. You get the privilege to work and you get the privilege to reside.
The privilege to work is limited to the sponsoring employer. When you stop working for your existing employer, your privilege to work ceases, but your privilege to reside continues until your current limited stay expires, in this instance sometime in 2016, or until the Immigration Department take it away from you.
Well, the Immigration Department very rarely indeed take this status away from you. So, if it’s your intention to cease working for your existing employer in April, but you’re then going to have a continuing limit of stay manifested in your passport that allows you to reside through to July 2016, some 15, 16, 17 months later.
And clearly you’re going to be in the driving seat to maintain your residence in Hong Kong for the purposes of your Right of Abode application, where the test for approval is, you need to show that you’ve been continuously and ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for a period of not less than seven years, where any absences from Hong Kong in that time have been of a merely temporary nature, as evidenced by what you leave behind to return back to at the end of each temporary stay abroad.
Moreover, you need to have had back to back residence visas in Hong Kong in order to qualify and you need to be clearly settled in Hong Kong at the point of view making your application whilst you’re also making a declaration. To the extent that you’ve taken Hong Kong as your only place of permanent residence, so insofar as you leaving your employer in April goes, and then qualifying for seven years anniversary of continuous ordinary residence come July of this year, then you’re certainly in the driving seat to progress with that application, notwithstanding the fact that you don’t have an employment in play at the time that you do make your application at the seven year anniversary mark, bearing in mind that you need to show to the Immigration Department that you remain settled in Hong Kong, you need to be a tad circumspect about quitting in April and then going off on a jolly around the world doing all kinds of interesting things and thinking, well, then I’ll just drop back into Hong Kong around about the seven year mark, push forward my application for the Right of Abode.
As I said, I suggest that you be a tad circumspect about this, because your rationale for the residence that you’ve got is employment. Now, if you cease working for your employer prior to you having converted through to permanent residency, the onus is on you to show to the Immigration Department that during the weeks and months in the wake of you having left your existing employer, you’ve attempted to bring about the circumstances such as you can, to re invoke the essential rationale for you having been granted that visa in the first place, which in your instance, clearly is an employment visa.
So, yeah, by all means, you can go off and take some time away. It’s fairly reasonable. You stop working and you want to go for sort of blow out the cobwebs, that’s perfectly okay. But it’s really important to understand that you’ve got to leave behind in Hong Kong all the vestiges of your ordinary life such that you can return back to it and pick up from where you left off once you have been able to clear a pathway for your future endeavours here.
So, yeah, just to answer your question specifically, one by one, will your employment visa expire when your employment visa ends, and will you be able to stay in Hong Kong after April? Yes, clearly, as I’ve just explained, you will be able to do that; and if you’re in Hong Kong in July and you make your application for the Right of Abode, but you don’t have an employment at that point, yes, you can make your application, but stand ready for the Immigration Department to possibly come back and ask you some questions about what you try to do to bring about the circumstances for continuing employment in Hong Kong so they can be satisfied that you haven’t in any way abandoned your settlement with your determination to leave your work.
And then finally, if you leave Hong Kong in April and return in July, can you still apply for the Right of Abode in Hong Kong? Yes, you can. But again, the onus is on you to ensure that if the Immigration Department need evidence as to the state of your mind when you exited Hong Kong in April, that it was your intention to depart temporarily only and not leave on a permanent basis.
And that gets to the heart of settlement. So I would advise that if you’re going to go off, then leave behind in Hong Kong all the vestiges of your ordinary life, not least your accommodation arrangements and a mobile phone and everything else that goes with that. So that once you’ve blown off the cobwebs and you do return to Hong Kong, you’re in a position to make your application for the Right of Abode without compromising the notional idea of settlement at the time that you make that application, given that you won’t be in gainful employment at that moment in time.
Okay. I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
A relatively straightforward answer to, what can be, quite a complex question dealing with ‘Hong-Kong-immigration status-by-descent’ and, eventually, the Right of Abode for foreign nationals born in the HKSAR.
QUESTION
I was born in Hong Kong (I am a British passport holder and of British parents). I do not have ***.
My daughter was born in the US and has a US passport and a British passport. We have lived back in Hong Kong since 2010 and she has had a visa for school. She was born in 2003.
Does she need to spend 7 continuous years here in HK or can I apply for permanent residency for her because I was born here?
Thank you
ANSWER
Just reading between the lines of your question, it appears to me that as a British National, born in Hong Kong, you got your Immigration status here now by virtue of your birth in Hong Kong to British Hong Kong belongers prior to 1997, this gave you the right to land in the process; and this is an immigration status that is not quite the Right of Aboad, it’s just one notch below it. The Right to Land basically means that you have the right to land in Hong Kong, not be removed from Hong Kong, and not be subject to any conditions or limit of stay, including the amount of time that you can spend in Hong Kong.
However, with the Right to Land, you can’t pass this onto your daughter by descent. So, in practice, you will have found that when you came back in 2010, there was no immigration status available to her automatically, and therefore she had to be assessed on her own circumstances at that time.
So I suspect that you would have had to go on to secure immigration status for her, so that she could be here and study, and that would have been a dependent visa which you are able to sponsor for as a Right to Land holder. You could have, of course, made an application for student visa as well, and that would have been granted to.
Certainly she would have been entitled to a dependent visa had, you made an application, given that you do, on the face of it, possess the Right to Land. Therefore, as a temporary resident, whether she’s got a student visa or a dependent visa, she will have been, once she’s been here for a period of not less than seven years, she’ll be entitled to apply for the Right of Abode in her own right, and with that, her current limitations to her visa status will be lifted. And similarly for you, as I say, I assume when you say that you don’t have a three star ID card, you’re effectively saying that you haven’t yet gone on yourself to acquire the Right of Abode.
And after you have been here for seven years continuously, so looking at the dates, looks like 2017, you’ll be eligible to adjust your own immigration status from the Right to Land to the Right of Abode. And on that note, the three star denotation on your ID card itself basically just indicates that the holder is eligible for the issue of a Hong Kong re-entry permit from China, but only in the case of Chinese citizens, and that’s not routinely available to foreign nationals. But in and of itself, if you do possess three stars, it does indicate, as an implication that the ID card holder does have the Right of Abode. But that notwithstanding, it does state, the permanent identity card does state on the back that you have the rights of abode accordingly.
So, just to recap, effectively, once your daughter gets to seven years continuous order in residence, she’ll be able to make an application for the Right of Abode in her own right.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
Simple enough of a question – will your Hong Kong work visa be compromised if you are forced into bankruptcy while temporarily resident in the HKSAR?
QUESTION
If I am currently a working visa holder in Hong Kong, how will my visa be affected if I go bankrupt?
Will the Immigration Department tell me to leave Hong Kong immediately or will I be allowed to stay until the expiration of my limit of stay?
Also, I assume this will definitely be a huge detriment if I want to apply for an extension of stay right?
Thanks.
ANSWER
This is a great question and I’m surprised that it hasn’t presented itself over the last few years in its current guise. But essentially the thing to understand is that if you have become bankrupt in Hong Kong, it’s not good news. As you can appreciate, the ability to remain here over the long haul could be problematic and is indeed highly case specific.
Whilst you are being managed by a trustee in bankruptcy and you do maintain your current employment, then the Immigration Department will probably have something to say about that arrangement and would look at the extension of stay with a set of eyes that to put it sort of mildly, would not be routine.
Doesn’t automatically follow that you wouldn’t get an extension of stay. But if you’re seeking to change your employer and all this kind of stuff, then it might be problematic. But in the final analysis, it really does all depend. In any event, at the point of bankruptcy, if you do have a current limit of stay endorsed in your passport, that shouldn’t be affected.
That is, the Immigration Department won’t suddenly come sweeping down on you and say, hey, you’ve been made bankrupt. Therefore, we’re going to put. Pull the rug from under your feet and cancel your current limited stay and send you off, uh, from whence you came. No, the issue really only presents itself in the context of an application subsequently to extend your stay or to go through the processes of perhaps changing your sponsor.
Both of which would require express disclosure to the Immigration Department so that they could make a true assessment of whether or not you represent a security objection to Hong Kong, all things considered, as a result of your bankruptcy. But certainly, in my experience, there shouldn’t be an immediate impact on your current limited stay. Extensions could be problematic as could be change of sponsorships, if that’s what’s going on.
Okay, I hope you found that useful.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
This post deals with the requirements for getting permanent residency in Hong Kong
The modern, connected economy throws up myriad ways for people to organize their lives and business affairs and, as can be seen from this great question, how might ImmD respond to an application for the Right of Abode where an internet entrepreneur bases himself here with his family but they choose to spend a considerable amount of time elsewhere?
My wife and I first arrived here in April of 2011. I was on a working visa but in some ways it was similar to an investor visa. I have always been an online internet entrepreneur, opening, running and closing dozens of online businesses. They have always been run from an offshore “haven” location where essentially there is no need to maintain books or file annual tax returns.
As my citizenships don’t require me to pay taxes on worldwide income and as I had been essentially a resident of nowhere, basically a perpetual tourist for the past many years, I haven’t really had to settle down in any way.
So, in early 2011, upon hearing from me that I wanted to move to and settle into Hong Kong, my lawyer arranged for my offshore company to buy a defunct Hong Kong company and then have that Hong Kong company sponsor me for an employment based visa in Hong Kong.
That all seemed to work quite smoothly and I was in HK in just a few months from start to finish.
Since arriving in Hong Kong with my non-Hong Kong wife in early 2011, we have recently had a baby. The problem is that we like Hong Kong and have made it our primary home, renting a nice flat, sponsoring a live-in DH, moved our bank accounts here, receive all of our mail here, pay our salaries annual taxes here, I own the business here, pay its fees, rent an office, pay the business profits taxes, etc., etc. – basically spend a lot of money in Hong Kong for all of these things to put up the appearance of being a full-time resident.
But, we really don’t like spending all of our time in Hong Kong. We have homes in several other countries, whether our own or family homes, and I really don’t need to be in any one location in Hong Kong or anywhere to run my business affairs.
Until our children are required to be in school for 8-9 months of the year, I’d prefer to keep traveling.
My work is all done via laptop and cell phone. Arguably I could say that some of this travel is necessary for work, as I do meet or host clients from time to time, but maybe 1/3 at the very most and I don’t keep receipts or claim them as business expenses.
The only employees of the Hong Kong subsidiary are me and two admins, and they really only take care of Hong Kong affairs and little else. We do like spending some time in Hong Kong, maybe a few months per year in total, but spend the rest of our time on holiday, as much as 9-10 months of the year. I hope to continue this pattern until we have reached the 7 year mark in early 2018, at which time I’d like to apply for and hopefully receive our permanent residency.
And, despite what may seem like lack of ties to Hong Kong, we have by far much more attachments to Hong Kong than anywhere else in the world , though my wife and I are each dual nationals of two different countries (4 passports between the both of us) so we certainly would call Hong Kong home above all else.
Would this pattern jeopardize our permanent residency application? It would be precisely at this time, when 7 years will have been reached that we’ll finally be forced to settled down and set our oldest child into primary school and we would plan to do so in Hong Kong.
I do want to ultimately obtain PR status, but also want to spend most of my time until that time traveling abroad. I’d like to find out now rather than later, for if I am wasting my time with this and there is a chance my PR application would be rejected, I’d just as well give up the HK office, the HK business, the 2 admins, the rented flat, the DH, basically all of it, move everything back offshore and rent a suite at the four seasons for the 2 months of the year that I might actually be in Hong Kong, for it would be a LOT cheaper.
So, am I wasting my money continuing this charade for many more years or will it all work out in the end as long as I maintain all of the things that tie us to Hong Kong?
So, can I get Permanent Residency in Hong Kong?
ANSWER
The test for Right of Abode for a long stay foreign national resident of Hong Kong is to be able to show that you’ve been continuously and ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for a period of not less than seven years, and that any absences from Hong Kong in that time have been of a merely temporary nature as evidenced by what you leave behind to return back to at the end of each temporary stint abroad.
You also need to show that you have settled in Hong Kong at the time that you make your application for permanent residency. So on the facts that we’ve got in this question it would appear that you’ve actually got in place all the necessary presumptive evidence to denote that you are settled in Hong Kong.
The fact that you’ve got a home, the fact that your child was born in Hong Kong, you’ve got a full time sponsored foreign domestic helper, you’ve got your business in Hong Kong, you’re reporting for tax purposes in Hong Kong, you have an office and you’ve got a couple of employees, and on the basis and on the assumption that you continue to maintain all of that in situ for the rest of the time that you spend in Hong Kong, on the strength of that evidence, there is enough presumptive evidence to show that you are, for all practical purposes, settled in Hong Kong.
Now this then turns to the nub of the question, which is how much time is expected for you to be spending in Hong Kong to settle the idea of continuous ordinary residence. Continuity is, on the face of it, established through the maintenance of immigration status, residents immigration status back to back throughout all of that time; and therefore we then just need to look to the number of days and how that impacts on the perception of your notion of being settled up to and including the seven year mark. If you’ve got a really good reason for you spending a lot of time outside of Hong Kong, then the Immigration Department will accept that, for what it is ostensibly in the vast majority of cases this is settled through the fact that your commercial activities, your commercial endeavours whilst ostensibly based in Hong Kong are keeping you away from Hong Kong.
Question is then begged as to what about the situation where if you choose voluntarily to spend time away from Hong Kong because that’s what you prefer to do? And how would the Immigration Department perceive that as, in a sense, negating your idea of ordinary residence; the law, in actual fact, the common law, allows you to have a place of permanent residence, believe it or not, in two different places. You can be ordinarily resident in more than one place, any one point in time. But that’s an argument that you don’t really want to be having with the Immigration Department. What it’s better to do is to sort of lay down the necessary sort of tracks. Now anticipating that you’ll have a really good excuse at the seven year mark as to why you’ve spent all of the time outside of Hong Kong that you have given of course that that’s offset by the fact that you have everything else in place that shows that Hong Kong is effectively your only place of permanent residence, because of the facts on the ground that you’ve created in that time.
I also assume that at the time that you make your application, your child will be in school. And that’s again further good evidence as to the fact of settlement at the time that you make your application.
So it’s a tough one to definitively advise you on. However, my best advice would be anticipate that it’s the number of days in Hong Kong that are going to be the issue, and the time that you voluntarily choose to spend away from Hong Kong. And that’s something to a large degree you can control. The requirements are that the continuous, ordinary residents, effectively, are structured in such a way that even on the application form for Right of Abode, any absences that are less than six months don’t need detailing or specific explanation at the time that you commence your permanent residency processes.
But the Immigration Department will go through a tally to look to see effectively how much time you spent in Hong Kong and all of that time. So my best advice really would be carry on with what you’re doing but don’t spend a lot of time away, in large blocks.
If you can organise your affairs such that you can come into Hong Kong for a week every two or three months or so, prefer a little bit longer than that, and maintain that sort of profile throughout all of the time that you’re in Hong Kong.
And then perhaps when your child gets a little bit older and the opportunity for your child to go to preschool then put the child in preschool. Perhaps that would be, you know, when he’s, he or she is three or four years of age, and show that the child’s been in preschool, even though when he’s not in preschool you’ve chosen to be elsewhere.
So the saving grace, as you’ve quite properly identified, is that you’ve got in place all the infrastructure to suggest that Hong Kong is your, effectively your only place of permanent residence, and the challenge then is just to map out how you decide, to experience your lives over the course of the next five years, and the choices that you make in terms of how much time you decide to spend in Hong Kong, in terms of number of days and also the number of trips that you make back to Hong Kong.
I mean, really avoid staying away for several months at a time, continuously, because that kind of sends the wrong message. But if you are coming back on a regular basis, even if you choose just to spend a small amount of time when you’re back here, I think you’ll find that the profile that you’ll build up over the course of the next five years should see you in good stead. And you’ll want to be able to persuade the Immigration Department that you’ve passed the test for approvability for a permanent residency application.
VisaGeeza.Ai – Making Hong Kong Immigration A Lot Easier
This post deals with the options for a Hong Kong Work Visa Holder who owns shares in a company but also intends to get enrolled in a full-time Masters Degree Programme
Hong Kong being the dynamic ‘all-things-to-all-people’ type of place it is, oftentimes, certain life circumstances here throw up immigration challenges that need to be considered carefully to ensure that you do not inadvertently run afoul of the law and end up doing things that are no commensurate with your formal conditions of stay.
This question presents a number of issues for consideration.
QUESTION
I have been working in Hong Kong for the past five years under an employment visa and need today to apply for a student visa as I am no longer employed by my current sponsor-employer of record during my studies (full-time Masters Degree programme) starting in August 2013.
However, I have recently established a company in Hong Kong and have shares in this company.
At first blush, this question appears kind of complicated. But, as you’ll discover as I work my way through the answer for you, it’s actually quite a straightforward situation. It will require you making a particular application to adjust your status, but, all things considered, it is quite straightforward.
So presently you hold an employment visa, and as an employment visa holder, if you are no longer working for your current employer, then you’re allowed to remain in Hong Kong until your current limit of stay expires, whereupon you’re expected to leave. However, if you wish to join in a full time course of study, then you will have to adjust your immigration status from sponsored employment through to student visa.
On the other hand, if it was a part-time course of study as an employment visa holder, you could participate in that part-time course of study without needing to make any further application to the Immigration Department at this time. And in fact, the immigration department generally don’t issue student visas for part-time courses of study. Sometimes they do, but generally they don’t. So what you’re left with is adjusting your status from sponsored employment through to student, and the grant of the student visa should be straightforward. And the university will no doubt assist you to that end because it’s a kind of run of the mill process for them.
Now, getting to the meat and potatoes of your question, which is if you are presently holding shares in a Hong Kong company, will it preclude you from getting a student visa? Well, we need to take a step back in any event, and look at your ability to hold shares in a Hong Kong limited liability company while you’re an employment visa holder.
Now, in the current policy, it’s perfectly okay for you to make an investment into either a public company or you need a private company and hold shares, those vehicles, so long as you are not actively engaged in the management and direction of that business. So if effectively, what you’ve done is acquired the shares in the company, and then you started to do some trading, or you’re starting to effectively engage in proper business activity with a partner or by yourself, then you need to be aware that, in any event, you would have to make an application to the Immigration Department to join an assigned business that your current immigration status. And normally, if you’re an employment visa holder, this requires you to get the consent of your existing employer to do this. But given that you’re no longer working for your current employer, obviously you’re not in a position to go about making an application to join in a side businessformally. Therefore, what you’re left with is a dichotomy because you can’t be a full time student and engage and manage a business; at the same time, Immigration Department are principally not going to allow you to do that.
Therefore, effectively, my advice to you would be to put on hold your plans for your business or training activity and concentrate on your studies full time. And then when you come out of your studies you can pick up the pace on your formal business activities, if indeed that’s what you’re planning to do.
In that regard, when you finish your student status upon graduation, you’ll be able to make an application under the immigration arrangements for non-local graduates, which effectively mean that without having to procure an employer sponsor or indeed notify the Immigration Department in any express terms what it is that you’re doing in the wake of your formal graduation from your student status, as it were.
Effectively what you can do is then embark on your own business activity if that’s what you plan to do through the company that you own. And, all of that activity effectively will be allowed to occur within twelve months after you’re finishing your formal course of study.
So finish your student visa, get yourself an immigration arrangement for non-local graduates approval, that will then effectively, if I’ve done the mathematics right, give you about two and a half years from now, and that, as you can appreciate together with the five and a half years or so that you’ve been in Hong Kong five years as it were, is going to take you well past the seven year mark.
So when you are at the full seven years you can make an application for the right of abodeand all the time that you’ve spent as a student and indeed subsequently as a holder of an immigration arrangements non-local graduates visa, that will allow your continuous ordinary residence to be maintained at all times. So you’ll be able to adjust your status from temporary residence through to permanent residency and you’ll secure the right of abode.
So all things considered, you’re in pretty good shape, but what you need to be very mindful of is exactly what it is that you’re going to be doing in relation to the company that you hold shares in whilst you’re a student visa holder.
At the very, very least you need to make an application to the Immigration Department to get their permission to engage in any kind of business activity whilst you’re a student visa holder in relation to your own company. But my best advice is based on prior experience in this area, it’s just to put your head down, get on with your studies, adjust from student through to immigration arrangements for non-local graduates. No further recourse at that time to the Immigration Department for permissions to join in the business that you own shares of and, once you get to the seven year mark, you’ll be able to convert through to permanent residency.
And the issue of you holding shares in the company should never present itself as a problem. I hope that helps.
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